Sermon Series: Apologetics

About this sermon

A Morning Instruction class continuing with the Bahnsen-Stein debate. Everyone presupposes the laws of logic, science, and morality, and Bahnsen’s transcendental argument asks how an atheist worldview can account for them. Stein offers to make the world a better place instead of hoping for “pie in the sky,” but he never explains the standards he uses to call Christian belief irrational. The class discusses how unbelievers rely on what only a Christian worldview can explain, and how believers should answer the strongest form of an opponent’s argument.

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Sermon transcript

That brings us to what we’re going to talk about here. We’re going to listen to a little bit more of the Bonson-Stein debate. And we’re going to analyze what we’re going to hear. OK? Now, as I’ve said before, all the classes that preceded were in some sense looking to equip you for this debate. Not just that, I mean, I think it’s biblical and it helps us to think with an understanding of people’s presuppositions. Now let me just review what we talked about last week and review what we listened to, okay?

Greg Bonson is the Christian, he’s the OP minister. Gordon Stein is the atheist. Now, the type of apologetics that we have been doing and focusing is on presuppositional, presuppositionalism. No need to be scared off by such a large word because we’ll break it down.

We have what word here? To suppose. We all suppose a lot of things, right? We suppose that the sun’s gonna, rise tomorrow and we suppose that gravity’s always going to behave and things like that. Everybody supposes a lot of things. But there are also things that we presuppose. There are things that we assume to be true, we assume to be the case, without even thinking about them. And we think of We presuppose these things, that is, we suppose them beforehand.

One of the things that everybody presupposes is the laws of logic. Now, it was about two months ago, but we talked about the laws of logic. The laws of logic are the rules of thought, the rules of argument, really the rules of thinking. People intuitively know them. Now we talked about them, we went through them, and I think everyone really got a pretty good grasp of them, but there’s always more that we can learn about them, because if you break the laws of logic, you’re essentially lying, okay? You’re being deceptive. or you are being deceived. Now, logic is a presupposition.

It’s something that everyone just assumes is going to be the case. Now, the atheist just came to this debate, and he says, we’re gonna use logic. And he said logical binds and logical self-contradictions. He had never sought to justify whether laws of logic make sense in his worldview. He never asked himself whether they make sense or how he could justify them. They were supposed to be the case beforehand.

So what Bonson does is he’s saying, on the Christian worldview, look where I’m standing. I’m standing upon the Christian God, the Christian worldview. And in the Christian worldview, it makes perfect sense imposing them upon us and instead of giving the atheist some some just plain evidence straight across he actually goes to attack the foundation of The other person’s worldview and he is saying how is it that you can account for laws of logic? you only believe in material things as an atheist and If you only believe in material things, then you can’t believe in the laws of logic. Because laws of logic, I mean, you can’t go pour acid on the law on the speedway. It’s a law. They’re not things that are touched. So in your world view, which is atoms banging around, just a bunch of protoplasm, where is the justification for it?

The atheists had no idea. This is how we defend the faith, I think, most faithfully and most biblically. We say, in my worldview, makes sense. In your worldview, doesn’t make sense to have logic. And he just goes back and forth and shows him that the proof of the Christian God is that without him, you cannot prove anything. With the Christian God, you have logic, you have laws of thought. Over here, you don’t have it. And so he says, when the atheist tries to use laws of logic, whenever he tries to argue, really, whenever he utters a sentence, he is borrowing from my worldview. He is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

So we have an analogy here, though, because we’re going to look at the problem of evil Guess what the answer to the problem of evil, I’ll tell you what the problem of evil is in a minute. The problem of evil, the answer to it is, there’s no such thing as evil in your world view. Talking about evil, you’re borrowing from my world view. Okay, now, problem of evil is, as we’re about to hear, how is it that in all good God exists, and an all-powerful God exists, yet there’s evil in the world.

These things, the atheist things, he thinks these can’t be. They can’t come together. We’re going to listen to him. The atheist, we didn’t really give him much time to talk last time. We’re going to listen to him. Now understand, he has already fallen into multiple traps by this point. So what he’s about to say is kind of meandering. But he does make a point across. Why is it that hospitals and churches and schools, they all get hit by tornadoes, and why are people evil, and things like that. We ought to hear him out.

I’m sorry, what? The what? You did! I didn’t see your hand. Go ahead. I’m just… Evil is… Atheists can’t believe in evil because it’s like a concept. Is that what you’re saying? It’s not material? Actually, I’m previewing it. But let me just say… Because Bonson and they’re gonna… Oh, okay. It’s really good, Bonson, the way he deals with it. But it’s like this.

You don’t have absolute standards of what’s right and wrong. You don’t have absolute standards of good and evil. We do. In our worldview, we have those, what is it? Well, if it’s contrary to God’s nature, it’s evil. If it’s within God’s nature, or if it goes along with God’s nature, then it’s good. We have, it’s like this. If someone comes to you and they want to talk about the degrees, how hot it is, We have a standard. It’s called Fahrenheit, right? Or Celsius.

Why an atheist doesn’t have that on his own worldview, according to his own presuppositions, he doesn’t have that. He only has that if he comes into our side and stands on, he comes over and stands on our platform for a minute. And then when you say, well, there are laws of thought and laws of absolute standards of evil and good, well, then he jumps back to his own. Or you might say, logic entails that there’s a God.

OK, now I’m back here. Okay, Christian, he might stand over here and say, Christians are bad, and horrible things happen in the world, he’s standing on our worldview, and then you say, well, you want to use the Ten Commandments, because they’re a good law to use, but why do you only want to use the latter six? What about the first one? Oh, I’m back over here. So he’s coming over here and going back. So he doesn’t have absolute standards of it. All he has is Adams banging around. According to his world view.

If all good does not exist, why is there evil in the world? We are told with God that all things are possible. If all things are possible, it would be possible for him to create a world where there is a vast mass of suffering that is moral and pointless, such as the pain and misery of animals, the cancer and blindness of little children, the humiliations of similarity and insanity were avoided. These are apparently the predictions of the Creator himself, or else we have a God that is omnipotent.

If you admit that, then you deny his goodness. If you say that you would not have done otherwise, you deny within things that are possible. So the atheist can present several arguments which sort of increase the probability that there isn’t a God. They’re not proofs, as I said.

One of them would be the problem of evil. The idea is that the presence of evil is incompatible with the all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God, as Dr. Bonson suggested he believes in. Now, he could come up with a statement that injustice in this world may well be corrected in the next world, but that would be something that he would be making without any evidence whatsoever. Just, again, wishful thinking. He can also get out of his bind by saying that God is not all-powerful, that some evil things are done without his permission, so to speak, in which case his statement that he believes in an omnipotent God is falsified. He can also say that the old argument about free will, which is basically a morass into which he may fall if he wishes, will not do, to say that God gave man free will and therefore he can choose between the evil and the good, is to imply that God was unable to make a man who could examine both sides and always choose the good.

In other words, he’s limited, and the only way he can do it is to let man completely choose for himself, as if that would take something away from man, if he could examine both sides and still have the guidance within himself to always choose the good.

Now, there’s no obvious physical evidence of a god. If god wanted man to believe in him, man or woman, people, he could, all you have to do is put in an appearance before a group of people, especially a group of atheists. In fact, we invite them to our meetings to put in an appearance. In that way, anyone would believe in him except a fool.

Well, the Christian says that this may sound logical to you, but it doesn’t to God. God evidently wants man to believe on faith, without adequate evidence. Well, if He does, then why didn’t He give man the power of reason? And why didn’t He give man more reason than any other animal has?

If all living things on the Earth were created by a God who was a loving God who made man in his own image, how do you explain the fact that he must have created the tapeworm, the malaria parasite, tetanus germs, polio, tits, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and fleas?

Now, surely the dog has not suffered from original sin and needs to be infected with fleas so he can get to doggy heaven, which would be better than his present life. The standard answer of theists to this kind of question is things have to be better after death. We have these things on earth, it’s a veil of tears, so to speak.

It doesn’t make no sense. I mean, any God that would punish a man for what his ancestors did is not a very moral God. I’m talking about original sin now, I don’t even know what I’m talking about. There are many instances on the earth in which no distinction seems to be made between the innocent and the guilty, between the Christian and the non-believer. For example, in natural disasters like an earthquake or a fire, it kills Christians, it kills babies, it kills animals, it kills non-Christians.

You certainly can’t say that these people were punished in some way for something that they did. It also demolishes churches and hospitals without distinction. Isn’t this evidence that at the very least, whatever force there is controlling these things doesn’t care if people are Christians or not? Or whether they’re innocent or not?

If there’s only one God and he cares at all how he’s worshipped, why are there so many different conceptions of God and so many different religions, all claiming to be the one true religion? Does this mean that they’re all mistaken? Does it mean that one is correct and all the others are mistaken?

There’s an old joke about an atheist and what she said to a believer. You know, we believe that 99 of the 100 gods are false. I just go one step further and say that the 100th one was also false. So I’m sure that Dr. Bonson, in fact, he gave an agreement that he would help me refute any other gods but the Christian god.

If Christianity is the one true religion, why are so many people who sincerely believe in it found in prisons, slums, and in organized crime? I’m not saying that all people there are Christians. I’m not saying that all people who organize crime are Christians either. But evidently, if Christianity led to an elevation of moral standards, which we haven’t gotten into yet, about morality, but I’m going to jump the gun here a little bit, Christians would be expected to be highly moral. not rest moral. In fact, studies of the religious beliefs of prisoners have shown that almost all were devout Christians.

The number of atheists is less than 1%. These statistics were, in fact, so disturbing to the people who conducted them that they stopped collecting them recently. Can’t argue with the facts, though. Any system which seems to fail in its application as frequently as Christianity does is not a very good or practical system for mankind to follow. I don’t want to get into a real discussion of Christianity, except that Dr. Bonson insists that the Christian God, and Jesus, and the other evidences that come from the Christian God, and commonness with them are true, and the others are not. What are we left with after this exercise? Well, we can see that we can’t prove the existence of God by any rational or logical process, and Dr. Bonson has not offered us any.

We have a factual issue here. Again, as I said, because the proof’s failed, it doesn’t mean that existence is disproved, but I think it certainly is unproved. We can, as I will say in my closing statement, this does not leave us in a bleak and unholy world. There are many, many things that the atheist does with his life which make this world a nice place and enable him to get to the solvent of the problems of this world instead of hoping for pie in the sky, which does not seem to be very probable. OK. I think he had had the wind taken out of his sails a bit at that point. But really what he’s trying to say is this.

We want to put him on his best standing. We never want to attack the weakest argument. We want to attack the strongest that he has. And even if an opponent is not so strong, we might help to bolster their argument and say, you might be stronger if you said it this way.

This is what he’s saying. Supposedly, the Christian God is completely good. and the Christian God is completely powerful, yet existence of evil. Evil happens, it exists. These two on their own, they don’t seem to have too much conflict, right? But when you add this, this is a real big problem for some people, because Have we all wondered this?

Why does God bring this kind of suffering and this kind of sadness in the world? There are a lot of sad people. There are a lot of heartbroken people. There are people going through a great amount of physical pain. Why does God bring this? Why does God bring earth defects and all of these things? It really has a really strong rhetorical punch to it. Because this is, for many of us, believers and unbelievers. This is a cry of our soul. Why is it that God is good and powerful, yet he allows evil to be in the world? Lots of answers have been given to this by philosophers.

But notice, Gordon Stein spent about eight minutes talking about this. We’re gonna listen to one minute of Greg Bonson, how quickly he answers this. Now understand, he has been going on for a couple minutes on other things that Stein has raised. But then he says, he comes and says this.

Let me boot this up. Just for clarification. Yes. And where are we at in this debate? Are they asking each other questions and responding? They’re not. What we just listened to, let me say, this is the format. They had an opening statement. Each had an opening statement. Then they had cross-examination. Then they had closing statements for part one. Then they have two more opening statements to start over again. And then they have a cross-examination. They’re going to have a closing. They’re in the second part of opening statements. So that was the second opening statement? Yeah. OK.

Now. we’re going to skip over the cross-examination because it got into science and different things like that because ultimately Bonson demonstrates that if you assume that science exists you assume the Christian worldview because science only makes sense in the Christian worldview so every time someone uses science he proves that God exists just like every time someone uses logic or someone uses morality.

But we could take two lessons to talk about how that is the case. We’re keeping it simpler by just logic and evil. Three of the most important issues philosophically we must face Logic, science, and morality. The atheist universe is completely at odds with those things. So we have one minute left here, and I want to answer very quickly those few things that Michael Snyder brought up in his second presentation so that I might rebut them. He wants to know about the problem of evil. My answer to the problem of evil is this.

There is no problem of evil in an atheist universe because there is no evil in an atheist universe. Since there is no God, there is no absolute moral standard, and nothing is wrong. The torture of little children is not wrong. in an atheist universe. It may be painful, but it is not wrong. It is narrowly wrong in a theistic universe, and therefore there is a problem of evil, perhaps psychological or emotional sort.

But philosophically, the answer to the problem of evil is you don’t have an absolute standard of good by which to measure evil in an atheist universe. You only have that in the theistic universe, and therefore the very closing of the problem presupposes my worldview rather than his own. God has a good reason for the evil he plans for all of us. yes yes according to the bible what’s that? where in the bible? uh… ephesians chapter one romans chapter nine uh… isaiah chapter ten jeremiah twenty five and it’s also just assumed by the fact that there is evil in the world it would be certainly a We wouldn’t have a sovereign God if he did not plan it. What is the Christian answer to the problem of evil?

If we might just stand on this world, on this worldview, on this ground for a minute, we want to say, yes, God is completely good, yes, God is completely powerful, and yes, evil happens, but you heard what Bonson said, and it was textbook. God has a reason.

And that reason is known at least to him. He doesn’t need to tell us. I mean, God allowed, and we certainly would say he planned the evil of Job. He allowed for that to happen. God’s not surprised by that. What kind of God would we worship if we have a God who was surprised by the fall? Not a God who’s worthy of being worshiped. He knew it. planned the fall and allowed it so that we might know of his mercy and of his grace. This is our answer to it.

But then notice how he just, you can almost dismiss them, not in an arrogant way, but just say, you don’t have that problem. You’re just, in your own worldview, there’s no morality, there’s no logic, there’s no talking. If you were consistent, you would just be silent. All right?

Everybody got that? Notice, it takes eight minutes to talk about the problem of evil, and he bonds him just, my worldview, this is what we have. Your worldview, you’re borrowing from my worldview every time you assume it, every time you raise it. Everybody got that? Any questions? For clarity, yes. I just think it’s really cool how God is. Because when you can go through it that way, you can rest. And that’s where God’s always bringing us to, peace, and the knowledge of him, and that he is God. Whereas anybody else, they never rest. They’re always in turmoil. Yes, Isaiah, there’s no peace for the wicked. There really isn’t.

We are resting in God’s sovereignty. Wait, there is evil in the world, but guess what? We are resting in His goodness, resting in His power, resting in the fact that we do know that He’s got it under control, and He planned it, but he’s going to bring an end to it. And we also can rest in this, that we don’t know why he caused evil problem X, or allowed evil problem Y to happen. He has a good reason, and as Romans, Genesis, won’t the God of all the earth do right?

Yes, he very much will. But notice the way, as well, that, I mean, Bonson’s confident, he’s not arrogant, but he knows what he believes, he knows his Savior, he knows his Bible, and he also knows his Proverbs. Answer a fool according to his folly. Don’t answer a fool according to his folly. He just goes back and forth. My worldview, your worldview. My worldview, your worldview. So, when there are people who say, you can’t prove God’s existence. What would you say to someone who said, you can’t prove God’s existence? Anyone? What if we apply what we learned here? Someone says that you can’t prove God’s existence.

You know what I’m going to say? You just did. You spoke! You spoke, therefore you assume this is true. You argued against providence. You argued saying things are evil. You’ve already proven it by seeking to disprove it. You see, the power of this, that this leaves someone in silence because if he were consistent he would say nothing. But since he’s inconsistent, since he’s borrowing from the Christian worldview, he does say something.

Okay. Now, we’re going to listen to Bonson’s closing statement at the very, very end. And this, I think, it gives me chills. I think it’s just majestic. It’s just incredible what he, but all he’s going to be doing is just repeating this whole system. He’s been consistent from beginning to end. The last words of his first opening statement were, The atheist world you cannot account for this debate.

Okay? You showed up for the debate, therefore you lost. That’s what he’s saying. Okay? This is the power of this. Okay. Let me find where it is. This is 10 minutes. I need to preface this, though, real briefly just because I’m realizing we’re not We’re not listening to everything. In Stein’s closing statement, he says, everything Bonson has said has been irrational. Okay? He has played right into his hands. So, look, that’s very important that you understand that he says that. Everything Bonson said was irrational.

Dr. Bonson, your 10-minute closing statement. I want to begin my closing statement by thanking the debate team for inviting both Dr. Stein and myself here for this marvelous evening and interchange. And thank you all for giving up an evening to discuss what I consider a very important question. And I thank Dr. Stein for coming and for his graciousness toward me.

As far as my rebuttal, or excuse me, my closing statement, I need to deal, I think, first of all, perhaps in the entire time, analyzing this remark that my statements have been, tonight, irrational. Well, perhaps they have, but as he’s saying, so does it make it so. In fact, that’s something we just heard as well. And so if my statements have been irrational, then we’re going to need some standards of reasoning by which these statements have been shown to be irrational.

Dr. Stein has yet to explain to us even the broadest, simplest, unschooled, child matter that I told you about laws of logic, laws of science, and laws of morality. Anthony will begin to scratch the surface to tell us how in his worldview there can be laws of many sorts. And if there can’t be laws or standards in his worldview, then he can’t worry about my irrationality, my alleged irrationality. The transcendental argument for the existence of God has not been answered by Dr. Stein. It’s been debated, it’s been made fun of, but it hasn’t been answered.

And that’s what we’re here for, rational interchange. The transcendental argument says the proof of the Christian God is that without Him you can’t prove anything. Notice, the argument does not say that atheists don’t prove things. The argument doesn’t say that atheists don’t use logic, science, or laws of morality.

In fact, they do. The argument is that their worldview cannot account for what they are doing. Their worldview is not consistent with what they are doing. In their worldview, there are no laws, there are no abstract entities, there are no universal things, there are no prescriptions. There’s just material universe, naturally, simply explained, and the way things happen to be. That’s not what I like. They’re universal, and therefore, there really doesn’t account for logic, science, or morality.

But atheists, of course, use logic, science, and morality. And in so doing, atheists give continual evidence of the fact that in their heart of hearts they aren’t atheists. In their heart of hearts they know the God I’m talking about. This God made them, this God revealed himself continually to them through the natural order, through their conscience, and through their very use of reason. They know this God, and they suppress the truth about him. And one of the ways we see that they suppress the truth about them is because they do contain in them huge amounts of logic, science, and morality, though their morals do not account for them.

Dr. Stein has said the laws of logic are merely conventional. If so, then, on convention, he wins tonight’s debate, on convention, I win tonight’s debate. If you’re satisfied with that, you didn’t need to come in the first place. You expected the laws of logic to be applied at universal standards of rationality. Rationality is not possible in a universe that just consigns them to convention.

Dr. Stein has said the laws of science are law-like because of the inherent character of matter. The Marxist line is to note the inherent character of matter. Now, if you were God, you might reveal that to us, as I think God has revealed certain things to us about the operation of the universe.

But he’s not God. He doesn’t even believe there is a God. Since he hasn’t experienced all the instances of matter, all of the electron reactions, all of the other things that scientists look at, since he hasn’t experienced all of those, he doesn’t know that those things are universal. He doesn’t know that the future’s going to be like the past.

When he says, you know, it always has been in the past and what changes tomorrow, what does that make the front pages? That’s not an answer. You see, we’re asking, what justifies your proceeding on the expectation that the future’s like the past? To say, well, it’s always been that way in the past is just to beg the question.

We want to know on what basis you allow for the uniformity of nature and laws of science. Thirdly, we should have a wall to plurality tonight. He says they have a wall to plurality. The utilitarian standard is what brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number. But that doesn’t justify utilitarianism to announce it. He’s announced that as a standard. But why in an atheist universe should we live by that standard? Marquis de Sade enjoyed torturing the other. Now, why should he give up torture to women so that he might bring greater happiness to those women that he was tortured?

Now, I’ve got an answer for that. Some Dr. Stein likes it. Maybe some of you out there don’t like it. But at least I can begin philosophically to deal with that. I have an answer, a universal absolute about morality. Dr. Stein does not. He simply has an announced stipulated standard. And if morality can be stipulated, then, of course, Marquis de Sade can stipulate his own, even if Dr. Stein has stipulated his own. Why should he feed the poor? He says they want to do that. I grant that.

My argument tonight has never been that atheists are the lousiest people in the world. That’s not the point. Some Christians can be pretty lousy, too. But why is it that I call atheists or Christians lousy when they act in the ways that we’re thinking of? Because I have asked for the standards of morality to judge. Dr. Stein does not. And therefore, once again, from a transcendental standpoint, the atheistic worldview cannot account for this debate tonight.

Because this debate tonight has assumed that we’re going to use the laws of logic as standards of reasoning, or else we’re irrational. That we’re going to use the laws of science. We’re going to be intelligent in that way. We’re going to assume induction, causation, and all the things that scientists do. And it’s assumed moral standards. So we’re not going to be dishonest and try to lie or just try to deceive you.

I mean, if there aren’t laws of morality, I can just take out a gun right now and say, OK, Dr. Stein, make my day. Is there a God? You see, if he argues, oh, well, you can’t murder me because we’re on walls of morality, then, of course, he’s reading my name because I’m in the debate. That shows that the Indian sheriff is not correct.

He says, oh, well, we’re on the national standards. It’s all by convention and stipulation. That’s all right. But can I just pull the trigger and it’s all over? I’m in the debate anyway. Would you expect me to win the debate in that fashion? Absolutely not. You came here expecting rational interchange. I don’t think we’ve heard much. from Dr. Stein.

And I’ve asked him repeatedly, it’s very simple, I don’t want a lot of detail, just being indestructible to the surface, how, in a materialistic, naturalistic outlook on life, man in this place in the world, can you account for loss of logic, loss of science, and loss of morality? The atheist worldview cannot do it, and therefore I feel justified in concluding, as I did in my opening presentation this evening, by saying that the truth of the Christian God is the impossibility of the contrary. Without the Christian worldview, this debate wouldn’t make sense. The fool that said in his heart, there is no God.

Don’t misunderstand that. For a lot of people, the term fool is not engaging in name-calling. It’s trying to describe somebody who is dense, in the sense that they will not use his reason as God has given them. Some people with great eloquence who are far apart. OK, so the fool who says in his heart, there is no God.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, the first chapter, that God has made foolish the wisdom of this world, and called, and warned, and urged the wise. Where is the disputer and the debater of this age? Has God made foolish the wisdom of this world? In a sense, I think what Paul is telling us, if I can amplify and read between the lines, is that there is real philosophy. is an argument for the existence of God.

The whole history of philosophy is an argument for the existence of God because of the impossibility of the contrary. Someone who wants to say contrary to what the Bible says about God, why does he have to answer these questions? Why does he show that in his heart he may say there is no God, but he can’t live that way? He can’t reason that way. And that is the first chapter, Paul, that God is making himself known continually to all men, and persuasively, so that men do not have an excuse for their rejection of the existence of the Christian God. That isn’t to say that all men confess this God, not all will own up to Him as their Heavenly Father, not all will submit to Him. Some continue to rebel, some continue to devise their foolish errands and rationalizations for why they don’t have to believe in Him.

That’s what the Bible teaches. I didn’t come here and make this up. I didn’t come here to say, well, if you don’t agree, see you’re just being rebellious. That’s what the Bible says. What I want you to do tonight is to go home and consider whether there isn’t something to that. Why is it that some people continue to use lots of logic, lots of morality, lots of science, and yet they have a little team that just crashes with that, and they just won’t do anything to resolve our addiction?

Dr. Stein tonight made reference to my doctoral dissertation on self-deception. He learned how relevant it might be, or very relevant. Very relevant. Because what I do in that doctoral dissertation is to show that there are some people who know the truth, and yet work very hard to convince themselves that it’s not true.

Now, of course, atheists think that’s what Christians are doing. I recognize that, and we have to argue what the evidence for and against self-deception is. All I want to leave with you tonight is the fact that self-deception is a real phenomenon. It does happen to people. People who know the truth and yet work very hard to rationalize the evidence, convince themselves it’s falsehood, suppress the truth of their righteousness, convince themselves that there is no God.

But you can choose tonight between the Christian worldview, the Atheist worldview. We haven’t touched all of the issues that you may want to look into. But in broad strokes, we have touched on a very important issue. If you’re going to be a rational man, a moral man, a man of science, can you do so in an Atheist universe? I’d say you can. Thank you, Dr. Bond. How about that? It’s pretty amazing, I think. It just gives me chills at the end. I say you can’t. I think he’s made a very good case.

You just, you use logic, you use science, you use morality, you talk about evil, you assume God’s existence. So, I mean, the beauty of this is I know, I mean, I have books on apologetics where you have all kinds of answers, and you basically just have to memorize everything that’s in there. Okay, that’s one method of apologetics, and I say, that, no thanks, you know, you’ve got other books to read, you’ve got things to do.

It’s good to do that, but, you know, it’s not really feasible. If we understand this, and we read our Bible with this in mind, it can revolutionize how we read the Bible, and when someone does attack us or attack our faith, we’re able to just compare our worldview with theirs.

And anyone can do this. It’s not something that you need a PhD to do. It helps at the highest level, but I will say that in just the closing minutes, a few things. One, Obviously, we’re not saying that if someone comes to us hurt or broken and they are looking for answers that we pull this out and drop a nuke on them. Certainly not. When people are searching, we want to encourage that. Also, because of the power of this, we need to be humble about it, because this, in the wrong hands, could be very bad, and it has been. Bonson never mocks, never calls names, never makes fun. He says fool, but the way, when the Bible talks about fool, it means unbeliever, especially in Proverbs.

Greg Bonson’s son was about 13 or 12 when he saw this, and he didn’t realize what his dad was capable of. He didn’t realize his father’s vocabulary. He was just amazed by this. Throughout the rest of his life, he would say to his dad, you know, the kind of things that we’d like to say, you know, go team, right? Your dad, you really went after him? His dad would never, Greg Watson would never, you know, pat himself on the back. The most he could get his dad to say was, I think God was glorified that night.

A lot of humility, and I’m grateful for that. Any questions? We do have a couple of minutes. But I think he illustrates it very well. My worldview, your worldview. Answer fool according to his folly. Don’t answer fool according to his folly. Anyone? I’m just curious.

He calls himself an atheist, but he also makes the comment that I can’t prove that God doesn’t exist. I can’t disprove the Christian worldview, I just can’t prove it. He’s made some kind of comment, which to me, it sounds more like an agnostic, like, hey, I just don’t know. I’m just curious what the distinction between an agnostic and an atheist, because my comment would be, I don’t know if I’ve ever really met a true blue atheist. I think I’ve met a lot of agnostics who just kind of throw up their hand and say, I don’t know.

I just don’t think there’s enough to know what really is true. You know, you kind of get that? They’re confused. That is true. The way that Stein defines atheist Bonson was not pleased with, I mean he has a PhD in philosophy, he knows what atheists think. That’s why he asks him in the first cross-examination, do you have other people who define atheism in that way? Because he’s not used to it. It does sound more like an agnostic than an atheist.

Really what he was doing, what Stein was doing was he was trying to make his job easier. I don’t need to disprove God’s existence. All I need to do is prove that all the arguments ever given aren’t good enough. And so he thinks he did a good job with that. He really was kind of shaping his definition of atheist around his arguments against Christianity. We all deceive ourselves. We change our definitions, change our terms, so we can shoehorn them in. He was shoehorning, really. Yes, question? We’ve just got words. No, this is a very good way to end.

Yes and no. Yes, there are people who say, I don’t believe in God. So yes, according to their own world view, yeah, there are. But according to our world view, and biblically speaking, there’s no such thing as an atheist. Because Romans chapter one, first Corinthians chapter one and two, they make it, they know it. Every person, everyone in whom the, The image of God has been placed, knows there is a God, and is not an atheist, even though they’re suppressing it and pushing it down and making it…

Say a God, not the God. The God. They know the God. Yes. Go ahead. John’s question, in fact, is that people choose what they want to believe. The Jews don’t believe. People believe what they want to believe. They do choose. However, their choice of atheism or agnosticism or Buddhism or Hinduism or Mormonism is a suppression of the biblical God. They, on the surface, choose whatever. But at the deepest level, they are seeking to deny what they very well know, which is that the Christian God is the true God. So I mean, I’m not joking. Yes and no. Okay, let’s end.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

About this sermon

A Morning Instruction class listening to and discussing excerpts from the 1985 debate between Greg Bahnsen, an OPC minister, and the atheist Gordon Stein on the existence of God. Bahnsen argues that God’s existence is not a factual claim to be settled like any other, because worldviews rest on presuppositions; he proves the Christian God from the impossibility of the contrary. In cross-examination he presses Stein to account for the laws of logic, which are universal and immaterial and so cannot be explained by an atheist worldview.

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Sermon transcript

We’re about to listen to the Bonson-Stein debate. The Bonson-Stein debate is a debate that happened actually back in the 80s, but it’s a really, really, really good debate because it is a debate in a really good way, better than probably anyone else in the world ever could do, to demonstrate the foolishness of non-Christian worldviews. And he’s debating against Gordon Stein, who is an atheist. He is a man who has a PhD in biology, but he leaves that so that he can go tell the world how great atheism is. Atheism’s so wonderful.

Well, that’s what we’re about to listen to. Now, we’re not gonna listen to the whole thing because that would take too long. What we’re going to do is listen to selected portions of it. And that’s going to be, I’m gonna stop and start after certain segments happen. That way, we’ll be able to discuss for a few minutes.

Now, just wanna let you know what you’re about to be hearing because some of you might not be too familiar with it or how a debate goes on, but first they give opening statements where the Christian comes out and he talks about what he’s got to say. The atheist gives his opening statement. We’re just going to listen to the Christian’s opening statement. There’s just not enough time to listen to the atheist’s.

I’d be certainly glad to have us listen to it, pick it apart, but Watson will do that well enough. After that, after the opening statements, we’re gonna listen to the Christian’s opening statement, skip the atheists, and then we’re going to go to the cross-examination portion.

The cross-examination portion is the portion where they ask each other questions, and they try and poke holes in one another’s worldview. That’s, I think, the best part, when it’s, It’s gonna be fun. All right, if I find my eraser. Okay, let me find… The C.I. speech and debate team.

General Theis began this evening’s debate. The resolution before us is in the form of an interrogative, a question. Does God exist? Dr. Bonson, I’ll now ask for your 15-minute opening statement, please. I want to begin this evening with three opening and introductory remarks about the nature of the debate itself.

First of all, it’s necessary at the outset of our debate to define large terms. That’s always the case. And in particular here, I should make it clear what I mean when I use the term God. I want to specify that I’m arguing particularly in favor of Christian theism. and thought as a unit or system of thought, and not for anything like theism in general. And there are reasons for that, three.

The various conceptions of deity found in the world of religions are, in most cases, logically incompatible, leaving no unambiguous sense to general theism, whatever that might be. I have not found the non-Christian religions to be philosophically defensible, each of them being internally incoherent or undermining human reason and experience. And thirdly, since I am, by the grace of God, a Christian, I cannot from the heart adequately defend those religious faiths with which I disagree. For my commitment is to the tri-moon God and Christian worldview based on God’s revelation in the Old and New Testaments. or worse than undefending Christian theism.

Secondly, I want to observe, and we should indicate just what it is, it is not at issue in the debate, and on the basis of which we hope you will consider the debate. It must be made clear that we are debating about philosophical systems, not the people who adhere to or profess them. Our concerns with the objective merits of the case, which can be made for atheism or Christian theism, not related, subjective, or personal matters. And again, I have three reasons for illustrations of this. The personalities of those individuals who adhere to different systems of thought are not really relevant to the truth or falsity of the claims made by those systems.

Atheists and Christians can equally be found emotional, unlearned, intolerant, or rude in their approaches. Secondly, subjective claims made about the experience of inner satisfaction or peace, claims that are made innocently by both Christians and atheists in their literature, and promotional claims made about the superiority of Christianity toward atheism. For instance, some atheist literature suggests that greater men will help them through the independence of the atheist outlook. These sorts of things are always subject to conflicting interpretations and explanations. being, I think, more autobiographical rather than telling us anything for sure about the truth of the system under consideration. Thirdly, the issue is not whether atheists or professing Christians have ever done anything undesirable or morally unacceptable. One need only think respectively of the atheists involved in the reign of terror in the French Revolution and the professing Christian involved in the Spanish Inquisition.

Now, the question is not whether adherents of these systems have lived spotless lives, but whether atheism or Christian theism as philosophical systems are objectively true. And so I’ll be defending Christian theism, and I’ll be defending it as a philosophical system.

And my last introductory remark is simply to the effect that I want to concede to my opponent all issues pertaining to the control of ovarian maturation in Japanese quail. the subject of his doctoral dissertation in 1974 at Ohio State. Dr. Stein is a man of intelligence, and that’s not in question in this debate. I would not pretend to hold my own in a discussion with him of the empirical details of his narrow domain of specialized natural science. However, our subject tonight is really much different, calling for intelligent reflection upon issues which are philosophical or theological in character. For some reason, Dr. Stein has, over the last decade, left this field of expertise and given his life to a campaign for atheism. Whatever his perception of the reason for that, I do not believe that it is because of any genuinely cogent philosophical case which might be made for atheism as a worldview.

And it’s to this subject which I now turn for tonight’s debate. My opening case for the existence of God will cover three areas of thought. They are the nature of evidence, the presuppositional conflict of worldviews, and finally, the transcendental argument for God’s existence. First of all, the nature of evidence. How should the difference of opinion between the theist and the atheist be rationally resolved?

What Dr. Stein has written indicates that he, like many atheists, has not reflected adequately on this question. He writes, and I quote, the question of the existence of God is a factual question and should be answered in the same way as any other factual question, end of quote. The assumption that all existence claims are questions about matters of fact The assumption that these are all answered in the very same way is not merely oversimplified and misleading. It is simply mistaken.

The existence, factuality, or reality of different kinds of things is not established or disconfirmed in the same way in every case. We might ask, is there a box of crackers in the pantry? And we know how we would go about answering that question. But that is a far, far cry from the way we’d go about answering determining the reality of, say, baroelectric pressure, quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radioactivity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, the university itself that you’re now at, past events, categories, future contingencies, laws of thought, political obligations, individual identity over time, causation, memories, dreams, or even longer, beauty, In such cases, one does not do anything like walking through the pantry and looking inside for the crackers. There are thousands of existence or factual questions, and they are not at all answered in the same way in each case. Just think of the differences in argumentation and types of evidence used by biologists, grammarians, physicists, mathematicians, lawyers, logicians, mechanics, merchants, and artists.

It should be obvious that the type of evidence which one looks for in existence or factual claims will be determined by the field of discussion, and especially by the metaphysical nature of the entity mentioned in the claimant or question. Dr. Stein’s remark that the question of the existence of God is answered in the same way as any other factual question, mistakenly reduces the theistic question to the same level as a box of crackers in the pantry, which we will hereafter call the crackers in the pantry palace. Secondly, then, I’d like to talk about the presuppositional conflict in moral views. Dr. Stein has written about the nature of evidence in the theistic debate, and what he has said points to a second philosophical error of significant proportions. In passing, we would note how unclear he is, by the way, in speaking of the evidence which must be used, describing it variously as logic, facts, or reason. Each of these terms is susceptible to a whole host of differing senses, not only in philosophy, but especially in ordinary usage, depending on who’s using the terms. I take any wishes to judge hypotheses in the common sense by a test of logical coherence and empirical observation.

The problem arises when Dr. Stein elsewhere insists that every claim which someone makes must be treated as a hypothesis which must be tested by such evidence before accepting it. There is to be nothing, he says, which smacks of begging the question of circular reasoning This, I think, is oversimplified thinking, and again, misleading, what we might call the pretended neutrality of fallacy.

One can see this by considering the following quotation from Dr. Stein, and I quote, the use of logic or reason is the only valid way to examine the truth or falsify the statement which claims to be factual. That’s the end of the quote. One must eventually ask Dr. Stein, then, how he proves this statement itself That is, how does he prove that logic or reason is the only way to prove factual statements? He’s now at the horns of a real epistemological dilemma. If he says that the statement is proven by logic or reason, then he’s engaging in circular reasoning and he’s begging the question, which he starts with and forbids. If he says that the statement is proven in some other fashion, then he refutes the statement itself, that logic or reason is the only way to prove things.

And my point is not to fault Dr. Stein’s commitment to logic or reason, but to observe that it actually has the nature of a pre-commitment or a presupposition. It is not something he has proven by empirical experience or logic, but it is rather that by which he proceeds to prove everything else. He is not presuppositionally new in his approach to factual questions and disputes. he does not avoid begging crucial questions, rather than proving them in what we might call the Garden of Eden’s ordinary way. Now, this tendency to beg crucial questions is notably exposed by Dr. Stein when the issue becomes the existence of God, because he demands that the theists present him with evidence for the existence of God.

Now, theists like myself would gladly and readily do so. There is the evidence of the creator and order itself, testifying for the wisdom, power, plan, and glory of God. One should not miss the testimony of the solar system, the persuasion of the sea, the amazing intricacies of the human body. There’s the evidence of history. God’s deliverance of his people, the miracles that pass overnight in the Red Sea, the visions of Isaiah, the Shekinah glory in the temple, the virgin birth of Jesus, his mighty miracles, his resurrection from the dead, there’s the evidence of special revelation, the wonder of the Bible, it’s God’s word, unsurpassed in its coherence over time, in its historical accuracy, in its life-renewing power.

In short, there is no shortage But Dr. Stein precludes the very possibility of any of this empirical evidence counting as proof of God’s existence. He writes, and I quote, The theist is hard-footed to document his claims through the existence of the supernatural if he is, in effect, forbidden from invoking the supernatural as a part of his explanation. Of course, this is entirely fair, as it would be begging the question to use what has to be proved as a part of the explanation.” End of quote. In advance, you see, Dr. Stein is committed to disallowing any theistic interpretation of nature, history, or experience. What he seems to overlook is that this is just as much begging the question on his own part as it is on the part of the theist who appeal to such evidence. He has not at all proven by empirical observation and logic his pre-commitment to naturalism.

He has assumed it in advance, accepting and rejecting all further factual claims in terms of that controlled and unproven assumption. Now, Matthias does the very same thing, don’t get me wrong. When certain empirical evidences are put forth as to why should we disprove the existence of God, Matthias regiments his commitments in terms of his presuppositions as well.

See, just as the nationalists would insist that Christ could not have risen from the dead, or that there is a national explanation yet to be found of how he did rise from the dead, So the supernationalist insists that the alleged discrepancies in the Bible have an explanation, some yet to be found perhaps, and that the evil of this world has a sufficient reason behind it, known at least to God.

They both have their governing presuppositions by which the facts of experience are interpreted, even as all philosophical systems, all worldviews do. At the most fundamental level of everyone’s thinking and beliefs, there are primary convictions about reality, man, the world, knowledge, truth, behavior, and such things. Convictions about which all other experiences organize, interpret, and apply. Dr. Stein has such presuppositions, and so do I, and so do all of you. And it is these presuppositions which determine what we accept by ordinary reasoning and evidence, for they are assumed in all of our reasoning, even about reasoning itself.

And so, I refer you again to a transcendental proof of God’s existence. How, then, should the difference of opinion between the theist and the atheist be rationally resolved? That was my opening question. We’ve seen two of Dr. Stein’s errors regarding it, the practice of the pantry fallacy and the pretended neutrality fallacy.

In the process of discussing them, we’ve observed that belief in the existence of God is not tested in any ordinary way, like other factual claims. And the reason for that is metaphysically, because of the non-natural character of God, and epistemologically, because of the presuppositional character of commitment, for or against his existence. Arguments over conflicting presuppositions between worldviews, therefore, must be resolved somewhat differently, and yet still rationally, than conflicts over factual existence, for instance, with any worldview or system of thoughts. When we go to look at the different worldviews that atheists and theists have, I suggest that we can prove the existence of God from the impossibility of the contrary.

The transcendental proof for God’s existence is that without Him, it is impossible to prove anything. The atheist worldview is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality. The atheist world, you cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral afterwards. In that sense, the atheist world, you cannot account for our debate tonight.

Thank you, Dr. Monson. Do you have any statement? Okay. I know there was a lot there. Some of that confused you, that’s okay. I mean, I think I got it the fifth or sixth time I listened to it. I went, aha, now I get it. So let me just go through his opening statement really briefly, because we’ve got to get to the really fun part.

He begins talking about Christian theism. He’s going to defend Christianity. A lot of debates you go to, they have a Christian and a non-Christian. The Christian’s just arguing for God, just God in general. As we’ve talked in past weeks, what happens if an atheist goes to theism? He now believes in a God. but he still ends up in hell because he needs to understand that Christ died for him, right? Plus, a lot of this atheist, Dr. Stein, he really wants to argue about just God in general. And he figures he can just beat up on that. And you’ll see the answer to that in a little bit.

So they’re debating systems of thought. They’re debating the Christian system of thought and the non-Christian system of thought. Not the people who are Christians and are non-Christians. A lot of times when a non-Christian gets into an argument with you, they’ll talk about how horrible those darn Christians are. Why would I want to go to church? Because they’re all a bunch of hypocrites, and then they want to talk about, they’ll want to try and say Hitler was a Christian, and they’ll want to talk about all kinds of horrible things that Christians have done.

That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. We’re not arguing about people and their hypocrisy. I mean, we can, you can go back and forth. You know what a Christian did? Or you know what an atheist did? You know what a Christian? It is of no use. We’re talking about the system, because There’s a system to the way that we think. It’s the one that’s governed by the Bible. And there is a system that they think of. They may not be as aware of it as we are. We need to think of it in a systematic way.

Then he gets a joke in. He says he’s gonna concede all discussion of ovarian maturation on Japanese quail. just a joke, he’s just making light of Dr. Stein’s doctoral dissertation, but really he’s just letting them know, hey, I’ve read this guy, I know what he thinks, I know what he believes. But really, in a mild way, Bonson is giving a logical fallacy.

He is kind of saying, this guy doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t have a PhD in philosophy or theology. He doesn’t really know. He left his expertise and he became a pop atheist. And I mean, this guy is a big guy in the atheist world. I mean, he’s writing books, he’s writing pamphlets. He’s president of this and vice president of that atheist society. When we go to the argument, first they talk about the nature of evidence. Let me just sum up what he means by the nature of evidence. What Bonson is saying is Stein assumes He’s an empirical scientist that all we need to do to learn something is to just go and see if our five senses prove that it’s true, right?

The crackers in the pantry house, all you need to do is go look in the pantry and see if there are crackers there. Bonson is saying, that’s not true at all. I mean, it certainly is true of, if there are crackers in the pantry, but then he gives this long list of examples that that’s not possible.

I mean, people who do certain types of physics, the kind of physics that are smaller than microscopic, dealing with atoms and quarks, which are on top of atoms. Nobody’s seen an atom, and so nobody’s seen a quark. So he’s just dinging him for that. And talking about the presuppositional conflict of worldviews, he’s really getting into his Vantillianism there, his presuppositionalism, because he’s saying that we can’t just look at a piece of evidence and both of us just examine it and we’re going to come to the same conclusion. conclusions. That’s never the case in any practice, in any science.

People always look at something and they come to different conclusions about it. And so the way that we ought to examine evidence and the way that we ought to settle whether a worldview is true is we do it by examining the worldview itself and examining the other person’s worldview. Now, one of the things that he, that Quonson brings up is logic. I think it was our second, maybe it was our third discussion, our third week of this, we talked about what logic is, we went through the laws of logic, everybody remember that? We talked about fallacies that people commit.

The atheist comes to this debate believing that logic is right and it’s useful, because he’s gonna get this Christian, he’s gonna get him real good. That’s what he’s thinking. He has never questioned where logic comes from. He has never… What it is for the atheist, it is a pre-supposition. It is an assumption that is governing his worldview, but it’s an assumption that he’s never examined.

So he’s going to be asked, why do you believe in logic? you have to, if you’re going to criticize the Christian worldview, if you’re gonna be over here and you’re gonna be criticizing our worldview, you have to say, you have to tell us where logic comes from in order to use logic to debate against God.

Now what he’s gonna show ultimately is, let me just back up a minute. If I were to say to Peter, and Peter’s an atheist, right? And I’m gonna say to him, can you use logic to prove logic? What would you say? Why not? That is a circle. You know how Christians get a bad rap all the time? Okay? Where does logic come from? In your worldview. Well, they’re gonna try and use logic to prove logic, and that’s just a circular, uh, uh, uh, you can’t use, don’t use logic to prove logic. Well, guess what? The atheist has to be quiet.

Because if you use, if you have a sentence, if you speak one sentence, you’re assuming logic, and you predicate it. You’ve spoken of something, which means, that you are, well, let me just say, you are assuming that your worldview is true before you’ve proven it to be true, but more than that, the non-Christian is borrowing from the Christian’s worldview in order to make sense of it, because you can’t make sense out of logic over here.

It makes perfect sense over here, over here. It’s just a reflection of God’s thinking that he’s imposing on us. Okay, now, time for the pugilism, Okay, either one way or another, verbal pugilism. Bonson’s gonna ask the questions first, and then Stein’s gonna ask the questions. Now, let me just, if you’ve not heard this, he really sets him up good. That’s not even wrong. He really sets him up well. Okay. We will now move to our period of cross-examination. The first cross-examiner will be Dr. Bonson. We’ll have an opportunity to cross-examine Dr. Stein. If I could please have silence, we would appreciate it.

Dr. Stein, do you have any sources that you can give to us very briefly that define atheism as one who finds the theistic truths inadequate rather than one who denies George Smith’s book, which you will find for sale in the back of the room upstairs later, called Atheism, the Case Against God, which I think is the finest book ever written on the subject, makes this quite explicit.

I have a copy right here. I can quote you the exact words if you’d like to see them. Well, that won’t be necessary. OK. Do you have any other sources? Do I have any other sources? Yes, we have the first. Sure. What would they be? Charles Bradlow, who I will give them to you right now. 200, 100 years ago, Charles Bradwell made the comment in his critique for atheism. He said, that’ll be fine, OK? Well, Dr. Stein, did you hear Dr. Bonson use the following argument?

The Bible says that God exists, and the Bible is the inspired word of God. Therefore, what it says must be true. Therefore, God exists. You did not use that and just assume that that was so because you were quoting from the Bible as if it were the truth.

I didn’t ask you if I used that argument. No, you did not use the argument, but you used the results of the argument. Dr. Stein, you mentioned 11 basic proofs for the existence of God. Did you mention the transcendental proof for the existence of God? No, I didn’t mention it by name. I think it is not a proof. And I would not call it a proof.

As I understand it, I would say. Are all factual questions answered in the very same way? No, they are not. They’re answered by the use of certain methods, though, that are the same. Reason, logic, and presenting evidence. I heard you mention logical guides and logical self-contradictions in your speech. You did say that? I said it. I used that phrase, yes. Do you believe there are logic guides?

Absolutely. Are they universal? They’re agreed upon by human beings. They aren’t laws that exist out in nature. They are. Are they simply conventions then? They’re conventions, but they’re conventions that are self-verifying. Are they sociological laws or moral laws? They are laws of thought which are interpreted by men and propagated by men.

Are they material in nature? How can a law be material? That’s the question I’m going to ask you. I would say no. Dr. Bonson, would you call God material or immaterial? Immaterial. What is something that’s immaterial? Something not extended in space. Can you give me an example of anything other than God that’s immaterial?

Laws of logic. Are you putting God as an equivalent thing to the laws of logic? You know, only if you think all factual questions are answered in a very safe way when you even assume. that by thinking there are two immaterial things that must be identical. No, I’m not assuming that. I’m just assuming that because the laws of logic are a convention among men, are you saying that God is a convention? I don’t accept the fact that God is a claim to laws of logic or convention. OK. Is your God omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent? Yes. You don’t find this a contradiction at all? I do not. OK, well, we’ll show you a little later that it is.

If your arguments in favor of the existence of God are shown to be incorrect, would you relinquish your belief in God? If my arguments are disproven, yes, so I relinquish my belief in God. If there are no arguments for the existence of God, I wouldn’t believe in God. That’s not quite answering the question. If someone can show you that there are no arguments, would you relinquish your belief?

I’m trying to see what’s the basis for belief. It’s impossible to show a universal negative. No one can show that there are no arguments for the existence of God, so we can only deal with those that I know of. Okay, but if someone showed that all the ones that you produced were invalid, what would be your position? Well, you’d have to describe certain conditions of this.

Rationally speaking, if there is no basis for belief in the existence of God, I would be the only person I believe in. Is God good? Yes, he is. How do you know that? He saved me. He created me. He made the world, and he made it good. He sent his son into the world to die for my sins.

Many of these evidences are quite convincing to me, but I don’t use them outside of the worldview in which they make sense, in which they would be taken as true. If you mean, is God good in such a way, or can I give you evidence that you would accept, that would depend on what your presuppositions are. I’m asking, if God says something, anything, is it right because what God, anything God does is good, because God is good, or does it become good just because God said it? I don’t know if I said that right. I guess I did. I understand the following was roughly stated.

What God says to be good is good because it reflects his own character. God is good and is the standard of goodness. That’s one of the presuppositions of the Christian world. Isn’t it indeed a presupposition, which is presupposed before there is any actual data from God?

Is this a question about my first opening statement? In a sense it is, because although it isn’t directly mentioned in your opening statement, it has to do with the whole idea of whether there are absolutes outside of God, which is an important issue in this whole debate. We may come up later. I still think we’re straining at the limits of debate rules here, but I want to ask you a question.

There are no absolutes outside of God. So, in other words, the fact that God is good is something that God told you, and that’s why you accept it rather than… knowing it ahead and assuming it as a presupposition, which you said a minute ago. That’s extremely simplistic. God told it to me, and He provided evidence of it. But you also said it was a presupposition. Right. Isn’t that a contradiction? Not at all. There are many things which are presupposed as well as evidenced in this book. For instance, the laws of logic. I would disagree with that, but… I still have some time, all right?

When we talk about immaterial things, are you also saying that there’s such a thing as, let’s say, ghosts or the soul, which are another example of immaterial things? Would you call them immaterial? I would say that man is a living soul and has an immaterial aspect to his being, yes.

And how would you prove this? Does this have to do with the existence of God now? Well, it has to do with the existence of immaterial things. Well, if there’s an immaterial being, God, and if the Bible is his word, then I would say that it’s revealing the nature of man in the Bible as sufficient proof. And that takes us back logically, as you’ll be bound to say, to whether God himself does exist.

And that’s what we’re supposed to be debating. So you’re giving me a circular argument, which is to… No, I’m telling you what the debate is about, Ben. I know what the debate is about. Okay, that’s the end of the cross-examination period. Did you enjoy that? That’s fun.

Transcendental argument is that the Christian worldview is true from the impossibility of the contrary. Every time an atheist talks, he assumes the Christian God’s truth. Every time a Christian God, or excuse me, every time a non-Christian complains about God doing something in the world or complains about evil in the world, this is gonna come up later, They’re assuming that the Christian God is true. Now, laws of logic, in the Christian worldview, in the Christian worldview, they are universal.

That is to say, they are everywhere. They’re not confined to the Western Hemisphere or something like that. They’re invariant. They don’t change. They’re abstract. say they’re not concrete you can’t go find the law of logic a law of logic and saw it in half or pour acid on it or something like that it is abstract it’s it’s a thought you can’t touch it right it is not material The atheist had not even thought of this. He’s just coming up and he’s just going to say, I’m just going to be the spoiler. I’m just going to show that all the arguments that have ever been given are wrong. But he talked. He spoke. He predicated.

Therefore, he assumed that the Christian God is true. That’s why Bonson is telling him The atheist worldview can’t account for our debate. Our debate was going to be about God, but if an atheist talks, he just assumed that the Christian worldview is true. Now the atheist, remember, he thinks that the laws of logic are, that they’re conventional. He thinks that they’re just something that people got together and made up. Well if that’s the case, then we Christians can come up with laws of logic, and atheists can come up with laws of logic, and we’ll never be able to talk to one another because we’re not using the same laws of logic.

It’s complete and utter nonsense to think that the laws of logic are just conventions, that there’s something that society made up. It’s like saying that mathematics is just made up by one society and a different form and rules of mathematics are made up by another society. It’s impossible. You can say that, but you can’t live that way. Because you might say that, but then you’re saying, oh, laws of logic are just conventions.

But then you’re coming to bind the Christian and win the argument against him, right? In the Christian worldview, I should mention the subtlety of what Bonson said. The Christian is asked, is God good? Notice how he didn’t just give blind evidence for it. He’s saying, There’s lots of evidence that I would give within my worldview, within my presuppositions. I’ll tell you, he made me, he saved me, he made the world, he made it good. These all make sense within the Christian worldview. Notice, he answers according to his own worldview, and he answers according to the non-Christian’s worldview.

This is Proverbs 26, 4 and 5 in an action. Answer a fool according to his folly, don’t answer a fool according to his folly. Okay, this is where The last portion we’re going to hear today, Bonson, this is him. He’s already scored the touchdown. This next eight minutes or so, he’s fighting them all.

No, he’s more gracious. the existence of God, I specified that I would be speaking in order to avoid logical contradiction of one particular view of God, the Christian view of God, which I personally hold. Dr. Stein says that he will not restrict himself to the Christian conception of God. Well, that’s fine, he may not, but to all the time he uses on anything that’s not the Christian conception of God will be irrelevant. In fact, I will join him in refuting those other conceptions of God. The existence of God that I’m arguing tonight is the Christian one.

Secondly, when Dr. Stein defines an atheist as one who finds the theistic proofs inadequate, that is unproven but not disproven, he’s engaging in linguistic revision. He does quote for us, of course, he said that he could, and I trust that he can, to atheists who likewise define atheism that way. But you see, that strikes me as similar to a Christian who defines his position as being true at the outset, and therefore it must be true because it’s true by definition.

He has minimized the task that is before him. by simply saying, I’m here to show that the theistic proofs are inadequate. Well, you see, even at that, though, he didn’t do his job, even though that was less than what he really should be doing, because he gave us 11 basic proofs for God, attributing one to me that I didn’t use and do not use, and did not assume. He mentioned 11 basic proofs, but did not deal with the one that I gave in my opening presentation, so he has not dealt yet with the argument that is before us this evening. Dr. Stein has mentioned logical minds and logical self-contradictions. He says that he holds that the laws of logic are universal, but, however, they are conventional in nature. That is not at all acceptable philosophically.

If the laws of logic are conventional in nature, then you might have different societies that use different laws of logic. It might be appropriate in some society to say, well, my car is in the parking lot, and it’s not the case that my car is in the parking lot. That is the law of certain societies. They have a convention that says, go ahead and contradict yourself. Of course, there are, in a sense, subgroups within our own society that might think that way. Thieves have a tendency to say, this is not my wallet. But it’s not the case that it’s not my wallet. They might engage in contradictions like that.

But I don’t think any of us are going to accept that the laws of logic are not conventional or not sociological. I would say the laws of logic have a transcendental necessity about them. They are universal, they are invariant, and they are not material in nature. And if they are not that, then I’d like to know, in an atheist universe, how it’s possible to have laws in the first place, and secondly, how it’s possible to justify those laws. The laws of logic, you see, are abstract. As abstract entities, which is the appropriate philosophical term, not spiritual, entities, as Dr. Stein is speaking of, as abstract entities, that is to say, non-individual or universal in character, they are not materialistic.

As universal, they are not experienced to be true. There may be experiences whereby the laws of logic are used, but no one has universal experience. No one has tried every possible instance of the law of logic. As invariant, they don’t fit into what most materialists would tell us about the constantly changing nature of the world. And so you see, we have a real problem on our hands. Dr. Stein wants to use the laws of logic tonight. I maintain that in so doing, he’s borrowing my worldview.

For you see, within the theistic worldview, laws of logic make sense. But in the theistic worldview, there can be abstract, universal, invariant entities, such as the laws of logic. Within the theistic worldview, you cannot contradict yourself, because if so do you engage in the nature of lying, and that’s contrary to the character of God as we perceive it.

And so the laws of logic are something that Dr. Stein is going to have to explain as an atheist, or else relinquish using them. The transcendental argument for the existence of God, then, which Dr. Stein has yet to touch, and which I don’t believe he can surmount, is that without the existence of God it’s impossible to prove anything. And that’s because in the atheistic world you cannot justify, you cannot account for laws in general, laws of thought in particular, laws of nature, cannot account for the human mind and the fact that it’s more than electrochemical complexes and events, and cannot give us moral absolutes. That is to say, in the atheist conception of the world, there’s really no reason to debate. Because in the end, as Dr. Stein has said, all these laws are conventional. All these laws are not really law-like in their nature, they’re just…

Well, if you’re an atheist and a materialist, you’d have to say they’re just something that happens inside the brain. But you see, what happens inside your brain is not the same as what happens inside my brain, and so what happens inside your brain is not a law. It doesn’t necessarily correspond to what happens in mind. In fact, it can’t be identical with what is inside of my mind or brain because we don’t have the same brains.

If the laws of logic come down to being materialistic entities, then they no longer have their wall-like character. If they are only social conventions, then, of course, What we might do tonight is, in the debate, is just define a new set of laws. We’ll say, all those who want the convention that says atheism must be true, atheism must be true, and we have the following laws, which we conventionally adopted for a bit, you see, we’ll be satisfied. But no one is satisfied that it’s our rational procedure to follow. The laws of logic cannot be avoided. The laws of logic cannot be accounted for in the materialistic universe. Therefore, the laws of logic are one of many evidences that, without God, You can’t prove anything at all.

And we’ll stop right there. I hope you all caught it. If not, we can always talk about it some more. But isn’t that fascinating? Christians can use logic because it reflects God’s thinking. Non-Christians, when they use logic, they’re assuming a Christian worldview even though they’re denying it. They’re suppressing it in unrighteousness. It is really, really, really difficult to deny God’s existence. In fact, you can’t. Because if you open your mouth to speak against God, you’ve assumed that He is already true. Isn’t that phenomenal?

Praise God, what’s that? Okay, we are right at the time, so maybe we’ll talk about that in a, separately, because I think we should let people, we should be faithful to the time. Let’s pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you that no one has any excuse at all because you have testified who you are to all of mankind. We thank you that you demonstrate to us, even as you have shown to us in your word, that it is impossible to deny you because you are the true God. We ask, O Father, that you would help us to understand our own worldview so that we might be able to give an answer to those who would speak ill of you and speak ill of those who are your followers. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. Thank you everyone.

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About this sermon

A Morning Instruction class on apologetics: the myth of neutrality. Believers and unbelievers both claim that unbiased people need only look at the evidence, but no one is neutral. Romans 1 teaches that all people know God and suppress the truth in unrighteousness, and every worldview, answering who we are, why we are here, and what is good, rests on presuppositions. Evidence for the faith, such as the manuscripts of Scripture, has real value, but a Christian defense of the faith begins with God and his word, not with supposed neutrality.

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Sermon transcript

apologetics. We want to see God as enthroned, Christ as Lord. Now, I want you to think about what you get when you go to the public square and you talk about Christ, you talk about Christianity. What you’ll often get is You need to be neutral, okay? You need to, because you’re a Christian, you have biases that fog the way that you’re able to understand, okay? So what you need to do is, when you come into the public square, or when you try to defend the faith even, even when you try to tell someone about the Lord Jesus Christ, What you need to do is empty your mind of things that bias you towards Christianity. You need to be neutral. That’s what you need to be. Well, that’s what they’re gonna tell you. The reason they’re going to tell you that is because they’re going to say, what you need to do is just look at the facts.

So you might hear a Christian who will tell a non-christian, you need to look at the evidence, and if you look at the evidence, you’ll see Christianity’s true. You might also hear a non-christian, and he says, well, you need to look at the evidence against Christianity, and then you’ll see that Christianity’s not true. Alright, so we have these conflicting understandings of Evidence and of truth and both are saying if you just be unbiased you you’d be able to see Okay, well And we’re going to establish whether someone is a reputable witness or not and And the jury is being told that Bob Smith, just the name I chose, Bob Smith is a reputable man, and he’s a good witness, okay? Now look how good of a man he is, all right? Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that’s you. Bob Smith is a great man. In fact, he’s a good father.

Look, medical center, I actually had years, I had years set up for this, where this is, you know, it just would have taken too long to write it, right? But look, he had, his wife has a baby, he paid for that, and so, it was a while ago, not recent, so it costs a lot more, but. He bought a bunch of furniture for the baby. He paid the doctor. Now, this baby was born in August. Now, it was just a couple months later. He bought a very nice Christmas present. Then what he did, a couple years later, this is a couple years later, looking at his checkbook or saying, well, look what else he did.

He sent his son to one of the most prestigious prep schools that there is. Right? He sent his son off to St. John’s Prep, Boys Prep. All right? This is a good man. Look at the evidence. Look what he’s done. This is his checkbook we’re talking about. He then sends his son off to Allen’s Military Academy. Now what I want you to understand is this is his checkbook. These are the checks that he’s spending, the money that he’s spending on his son. Sends him off there. Look, he bought his son a car. This is a good father. Now, the other side comes up. And his wife has a say in this, or his ex-wife. And she says, Bob Smith is not a reputable witness. And this is a whole bunch of nonsense here. He barely paid anything.

He bought that and that was fine. But look at this. He pays the doctor. Yeah, that’s fine. But look, he wanted nothing to do with his son. He sends him off to this one prep school. He sends him off to this military academy. He didn’t even pay that much. In fact, this is all he ever paid for his son. You see, this is not good evidence that he is a good father. He bought a car for his son. Yeah, this is when he was 18. You know what? He bought that car to make up for being a poor father. This is not a reputable witness. Now, why am I saying this? Why am I telling you this fictional story, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Because I want you to see that evidence is always interpreted. there is no uninterpreted evidence. So when someone says to you, you just have to be neutral, you just have to look at the facts, then you’ll see the truth, right?

Now, some people who watched TV a good number of years ago, even before I was born, There was a TV show where there was an Agent Friday. Who remembers Agent Friday? Right? People would be giving interpretation of the evidence, right? He’s basically a police officer. And he’s saying, what happened at this scene? What happened on this night or that night? And people begin to talk and explain what happened. And what would he say?

Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts. Don’t give me any interpretation. Just give me just the facts. Well, there are a lot of Agent Fridays in our culture. They’re saying, just look at the facts. Just give me the facts. When you just look at the facts, these are the facts. But facts are by necessity something that need to be interpreted and are interpreted.

So what I want you to see is there is no such thing as neutrality. They’re not neutral and neither should you be in defending the faith or anything. That should be kind of a mantra. They’re not and neither should you be. They’re not and neither should you be.

There is no neutrality. All right, not everybody is from Missouri, the show me state, right? Just it’s the show me state, just show me, just show me the facts, right? Facts are interpreted. Okay, everybody wants you to be neutral, leave your Christianity at the door. What does God say about neutrality?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Okay, true knowledge begins with the Christian God as the first assumption, the first idea. We begin with the Christian God, not just a God. We begin with the God of the Bible. We begin with the God who is eternally one in three. We begin with the God who sent his son to die for our sins and to be raised.

We are not neutral. We do not approach the defense of the faith in a non-committed way. We are committed when we begin. Non-believers are going to try and get you to be neutral, and you must call them on it. They’re not neutral. Neither should you be. Throw away your assumptions and be neutral. Now, this is a scam. No one is without presupposition. That is, no one is without unargued assumptions that they bring to the table of every discussion they have. of every meeting they have with people. Everybody has basic governing assumptions. Many of them don’t even realize it, because they’re calling for you to be neutral, right? Are they neutral? Turn with me to Ephesians 4, 17 through 19. Are you neutral, according to the Bible? And are they neutral? Ephesians 4, 17.

So this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. Do you understand who is calling for you to be neutral? Who is calling you to say, listen, if we’re going to talk about faith and Christianity, or if you’re going to prove the Bible’s true to me, then you need to do so without the Bible. You need to do so without biases.

And who’s doing this? Someone who is darkened in his understanding, who has futility in his mind, and is a hard-hearted person. That’s what we all were before we came to Christ, and that is what they are. And some of us, we still have hardness in our hearts, do we not? But God is a gracious God. This is describing someone who is not neutral, but is hostile to the faith. All right? They’re not, neither should you be, because it’s not possible.

Ephesians 4. 20 to 24, but you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus. That in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit. and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness and in truth. Do you understand what this is telling us? When we become believers in Christ, we put off our hardness of heart against the Lord Jesus Christ and all those things, the futility of our mind and our darkness, we lay those things aside and we enter into newness of life and we walk a different way.

We had a former manner of life we don’t live by in that way. It says in 24, put on the new self. Could anyone say, put on the new self, except for the mind of the new self, keep an open mind, just the facts, ma’am, show me state. That is not possible. Why is it not possible? Because there is what we would call an antithesis.

Peter, would you read Genesis 3.15?

Genesis 3.15. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. Is that 3.15? That might be 2.15.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. And he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. OK. There is enmity between the son of the woman and the son of the serpent. There’s animosity, enmity, there is tension between these two. So there is no such thing as neutrality. You have been renewed in your mind. Okay, furthering this point, just a few more things we go to, Romans 1, 1, 18. Do you understand what he read?

I mean, this is the beginning of the animosity between believer and unbeliever, and between those who are in favor of God and those who are not in favor of God. And it brings truth every day, every day, because the forces of Satan despise the forces of God. Romans 1, 18.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse. And here’s the kicker, for even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

I’ve got another description of those who are telling you to be neutral, but they’re not neutral, neither should you be. Because the reason they’re telling you to be neutral is because neutrality is unbelief. These are people who know God and are suppressing the truth about God in unrighteousness.

How long can the strongest man in the world keep a balloon underwater in a swimming pool? He can’t do it, or you get one of those rings that go around a child’s arm, you know, the floaters, what do they call them? What’s that? Swim? Swimmies. I never heard him called that, but maybe that’s the Western Pennsylvania term for them. In New Jersey? Might be an East Coast thing, I don’t know. But you’re like, how long can you keep them down? It can’t, it’s gonna come up.

That’s what the knowledge of God is for the non-believer. Push it down, push it down, keep down, suppress it, and it keeps coming up, and they wanna force it down all the more. Knowing God, they are suppressing the truth about him in unrighteousness. Now, this is not knowing a God. They know the true God. Doesn’t matter who it is. Doesn’t matter if it’s deepest, darkest Africa or a place in China. Doesn’t matter if it’s, you know, your milkman. Everyone knows God and is suppressing the truth about him.

The true God. Colossians 2, 3. Well, 2, 2, and 3, because it’s kind of a complete sentence. or an incomplete sentence as it’s broken up, Colossians. Two, talking about Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That’s just three.

The preceding is helpful, but the main thing I wanted to say is Christ himself in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So we understand that all wisdom and knowledge is deposited in the Lord Jesus Christ, okay? That means that all information, whether it’s about galaxies or computers or morality or laws of Pennsylvania, everything is deposited in Christ. All of the knowledge, but also all of the wisdom, all of the application of all knowledge is deposited in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And what I want you to see is when someone brings against us a claim that Christianity’s not true. And they say, you know, I can’t believe you believe that. And then you say, well, I think it’s true. I think it’s objectively true that Jesus really, literally died on a cross and rose again. And that’s what the prophets said would happen. They’ll say, well, can you prove that to me without your biases? You’re going to say, No, I can’t prove it to you without my biases because I’m saying that all wisdom and all knowledge are deposited in Him.

So what we want to say is, when we’re defending the faith, that we have a presupposition. Faith pre is before. and supposes in there, we have a presupposition. The thing that we suppose beforehand, even before we get into the discussion, is that Christ is reigning and that God is true. Now, if we’re honest, we’re going to say, Christ, he is our presupposition. And the worldview, the story that we have in the Bible, It’s all true. That’s our most basic presupposition. Now the non-believer has presuppositions as well. And we don’t want to let them just pretend to be neutral and we’re just the biased ones. We want to call them out on their biases. You are biased against God. I am biased towards God.

Yes. start talking with you, or whatever. If you said, okay, tell me your presuppositions, the average person wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. That’s true. Yes. I mean, that’d be a statement, but it’s in the form of a question, actually. Yes, you’re right. And it might be helpful for us to explain what that is, but you might just say, you have biases. You don’t need to use a, a five-syllable word, right? But you can also say, what are you Christoposing? You can say that. This is what I’m Christoposing. What are you Christoposing? Yes, yes.

It’s kind of, let’s get all of our cards on the table first. Don’t, let’s just, I’m pretending to be neutral and you’re pretending to be neutral. Neither one of us is neutral. I have put on the new self. I am a new creature in Christ. And they’re not gonna say this, but you, I believe that you’re running from God that you know. But we can just say, I’m not biased, neither are you. Or, excuse me, I am biased and so are you. We can’t help it. Everybody is.

Why is it that people, anywhere, everywhere, will look at the same piece of evidence and come to totally different conclusions? Because they come with presuppositions. They come with governing assumptions before the fact. Now, the presuppositions, they don’t just pop out of nowhere, they’re not just born ex nihilo, they’re not out of nothing, right? They come from somewhere, they come from people’s experiences and things that they’ve heard have biased them one way or another.

We wanna say, yeah, we certainly hope that our children growing up on the shorter catechism and memorizing the Bible will help them and aid them and that God will use that. So yes, I’m going on a tangent. Yeah, whichever words you wanna use, but just when they call you on, when they say, well, let’s be neutral, you might wanna say, well, let’s not be neutral. Let’s just be committed. Let’s just be both committed and let’s discuss this.

Not pretend that we’re not, because if we’re pretending to be neutral, we’ll get into trouble in the sense of, Colossians 2.8, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. Now, a lot of people will look at this and they’ll say, well, what he’s saying is Christians should never read philosophy. That’s not what he’s saying, because then Christians would just not be able to think. Because all thought is, in a sense, philosophical thinking, or it assumes some sort of philosophical thinking. Everybody has a worldview. Okay? Everyone has an understanding of the world governed by their presuppositions. Let me just say, a worldview, some sociologists would say, a worldview is governed, it seeks to answer three questions.

Who are we? Why are we here? And what is good? Okay? Who are we? Why are we here? What is good? Christians, who are we? Sinners who have been saved by grace and recreated in the image of God. Why are we here? Because God created us for His own glory. And what is good? Seeking to glorify God and worshipping Him. living a life unmolested by persecutors. Who are we? Why are we here?

What is good? Think for another person’s worldview. We want to be gracious to them. Think of someone who is, believes in Mother Earth. Who are we? Well, we are products of evolution and who have grown more intelligent in our minds. Why are we here? That might be somewhat mysterious, and they’d say that’s a mystery. But while we are here, we ought to do good things. We ought to seek to save the planet. So what is good? Well, recycling, and saving whales, and caring about the Earth. I’m not mocking them. Who are we? Why are we here?

What is good? You can do this with any worldview. Think about Buddhist you know Learn a little bit about another religion Who are we why are we here? What is good good good questions to ask? But if so so what I’m saying is everybody has a presuppositions and a worldview.

Paul’s not saying don’t study philosophy because guess what he quotes? Philosophers. He’s quoting certain poets of his day. He does in Titus 1, 2. He does in Acts chapter 17. The poets were the philosophers for a time in Greek philosophy because they were, they had a certain agenda. They were seeking to convert people to their particular philosophy. and they would put it into verse, put it into poetry, and Paul uses those things.

Now, what we must understand is that someone who would seek to get you to be neutral would be Colossians 2.8 robbing you of the philosophy that is according to Christ. Best way to say it. There is a philosophy that is according to Christ, and there is a philosophy that is contrary to Christ.

Okay? Now, one last verse that I’m going to let you know about is Acts chapter 2, 36. Peter’s preaching, and he is preaching away at Pentecost. This is kind of how he ends. He says, therefore, Notice that’s the conclusion. Remember two weeks ago? Premises and conclusions. He’s arguing. He says, therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified. Certain. Peter wants you to know for certain that Jesus has lived, died, and raised.

Okay, so I think hopefully we’re all convinced about the non-believer, they’re not neutral, neither should we be because we can’t be biblically speaking. But what about our fellow brothers and sisters? that we have much affection for in the Lord, our fellow Christians, who have a different way of defending the faith. Let me just break this down.

What I’m showing you is what is called presuppositionalism. In some ways, it’s rightly named. We defend the faith presuppositionally. And I’m having a brain freeze. I spelled it 100 or who knows how many times. Two Ps in presupposition? OK. It just doesn’t. What’s that? Three Ps. Three Ps. Well, two. OK. Three Ps? OK. Good. Very good. Yes. Two there. OK. It just didn’t look right for me, but I’m used to seeing it in print and not my own handwriting. That might be it. Okay, but we have brothers and sisters who have a different form of defending the faith, all right? And guess what? It’s based on being neutral. They want to be neutral, and they want the non-Christian to be neutral.

They are of the classical school of apologetics, or the evidentialist. of apologetics. Now, ultimately, later on, I’m going to break these two in because there’s a difference between a classical and an evidentialist. But there’s presuppositionalism, which is what we’re going to talk about and what we have been talking about. Then there’s classical or evidentialist.

Now what they will do is they’re going to try to build a cumulative case for God. This is key. They want to build a cumulative case, and this is what Cornelius Van Til called a blockhouse methodology. It would have been better if he’d said blockhouse method, but that’s okay. What we want, this is how a classical An evidentialist will often seek to defend the faith.

He wants to give arguments that are persuasive, that make it look more than likely like the Christian God is the true God. First what they’ll do is, they’re going to argue that a God exists. They go to, okay Mr. Unbeliever, I want you to be unbiased, look at that proof, I want you to see that a God must exist, or at least more than likely. So what they’re gonna do is, you’re gonna hear arguments like, well, what you ought to think about is the fact that everything in the world has a cause. So since everything in the world has a cause, there must be a first cause that must be God, all right? These things can’t just be set in motion themselves. So using a God must exist, or they might say, they might use beauty. Look at the mountains and the trees back there. We really have a good view of just the town and the river from here, do we not? Just from here, just look at the beauty of it. Can you look at the sunset and say, that’s just an accident?

There must be a God, there must be one. Now, key is, what am I defending? I’m defending Agog, trying to get you to see that it’s more than likely that there is Agog. Then what they’ll do is they’ll talk about the evidence that, let me just say this, say it this way. If I can first prove that there’s Agog, then hopefully I can build another block on top of that. and prove that the Christian God is true. So they’re doing it in steps.

First there’s a God, and then I eventually want you to see that the Christian God is true. So okay, so if I’ve established that first, it’s more than likely at least that there’s that, then you’re gonna try and prove Christianity is true. You might do that by arguing for the manuscript evidence of the Bible. Now, we certainly wanna say that in antiquity, in ancient times, there is no book that compares with the amount of manuscript evidence that we have of the Bible, okay?

Nobody questions what Socrates, well, very few people question what Plato said about Socrates. They believe that Plato wrote those things. Now, Socrates never wrote anything, but what we have about Socrates is Plato just writing all these dialogues about what happened.

Basically, Socrates rules the world. He always just gets into a debate and he body slams the person. He honestly does, it’s phenomenal, it’s really neat. The way he does it, right? Nobody says, well, we’re not sure that Plato wrote that. Everybody just thinks, well, Plato wrote that. You know, the amount, there are documents or writings of Plato, we have one or two or three manuscripts from that, right? The New Testament, we have thousands of partial manuscripts, full ones, little pieces, big pieces.

It’s amazing. And very close to the events as well, right? There are good reasons for arguing these things. They’re going to say, the manuscript evidence for the New Testament is bar none, there’s nothing like it. They might also talk about the archaeological evidence for Christianity. And there’s merit to this, just like there’s merit to talking about manuscript evidence, that the New Testament blows away Homer and everyone else. But the archaeological evidence, take your Bible with you into the Middle East and a lot of times we find these things and the Bible is vindicated.

They will also talk about statistics. Statistics. The statistics show that it’s highly unlikely that anyone could ever fulfill the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. For all of the prophecies that come in the Old Testament to be fulfilled in one man, born in Bethlehem, son of David, all these things, is unlikely, right? I mean, they’ll talk about how Let me just give a picture of it.

It is as likely, they’ll say, it is as likely for all of those things to happen in one man, it is as likely for you to take the state of Texas and fill it with gold coins. And you take one gold coin and you put a red X on it and you throw it out there for you to go and grab the you know, grab around and grab that one. I mean, you have three feet high of gold coins, the size of Texas. You’re going to go look in there and take one coin. It’s not going to happen, right?

It’s highly unlikely that you could have that many prophecies happen in one minute, unless it’s divine and it’s supernatural. That’s what they’re going to try to get you to see. Statistically, because of prophecy, it must be the case. Making a cumulative case for the proof. But, I want to ask you, is this faithful to what we’re told to do and told to understand? We’re about out of time, so I’ll just have to close with this. More things next week, it’s gonna be. I was headed somewhere. It’s more than likely that the God, it’s more than likely that the Christian God is it.

All the evidence, all the evidence, all the evidence, right? If you just look at it without any biases, Is the non-Christian going to look at it without any biases? No. Because he has his heart set against God, he’s going to go so far as to say this. If you give him 99.9% probability that there is a God and it’s a Christian, 9.9% likely that the Christian God is the true one, and Jesus rose, guess what a non-believer is going to do? I’ll take that .1%, won’t he?

You know he will. You say, but Jesus rose from the dead. He’s going to say, well, strange things happen. You’re building the blocks, they’re building cumulative case, there is a God, and then manuscript evidence, archeological evidence, and prophecy, and statistics.

Then you get to Proverbs 1, 7, that the beginning of knowledge is the true God. Beginning of wisdom and knowledge. For those who are of this school and their dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, that’s the end point. God’s wisdom and knowledge, that’s the very end.

If we argue presuppositionally, and I’m gonna show you how to do that next week, then I think we find ourselves much more faithful to our understanding of the non-believer, our understanding of ourselves. We also find ourselves defending the faith in the same way that the apostles did.

I hope to convince you of that. Does that make sense? This is, this is, The beginning point, not the end point. Very important for us to understand. Let’s set Christ in our hearts as the first principle and not have likely probability but have, as Acts chapter 2 says, therefore let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. Hope to show you how to do that and to convince you next week and every week after that. Let’s pray.

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