quote:Typically, when you prove something, a person judges its truthfulness with some sort of outside evidence or support. When it comes to something like the word of God, there can be no other support for it than itself. There is no higher appellate court. Any evidence that "proves" it is true would itself be the word of God. Moreover, in this scenario, humans are judging something that is divine. If that were possible, that thing would immediately not be divine. This point is obvious to Biblical writers when they appeal to the Scriptures. There is never a proof first, it is assumed.quote:
We're not trying to prove the Bible is God's word either. I guess we're on the same page.
I guess I have misunderstood something, then. I'm not very familiar with apologetics. Perhaps you can explain to me what the presuppositionalist's argument is, because I was under the impression that it is trying to prove that the Bible is the word of God.
Are you logically building up what a world would look like under the assumption that the Christian presuppositions are correct, and then trying to show that the world is how it ought to be exclusively under those presuppositions? This seems like a syntactically valid approach, though practically it seems an insurmountable endeavor. I would contend that an intellectually honest presuppositionalist would challenge his own presuppositions using this same format, and be open to changing his presuppositions if the converse can be shown: that his presuppositions lead to a world that doesn't conform to the real world.
Or is this all a battle for the philosophical high-ground? Are you trying to say that I have presuppositions, and you have presuppositions, and therefore we're on equal footing and everything boils down to how you see the world through your presuppositional lens. This line of reasoning seems fallacious. It's clear to see that not all presuppositional sets match up equally with the real world. To assert otherwise is disingenuous.
Or is it something else altogether that I've completely missed?
What you describe later in your post is one option to determine if a perspective is valid, only you're approaching it from your worldview. i.e. What does it mean to "conform to the real world?" (don't answer that) A much more straightforward approach would be "do my presuppositions undermine themselves?" For example, an atheist may say "if God is good and omnipotent, why is there evil?" The existence of evil undermines the presupposition that God is both good and omnipotent. Or a Christian might say "if there is no God, why is there good/evil?" The atheists' acknowledgement of good/evil (see thread below on atheist morals) supposes an objective reference point outside of humans, therefore God. *please atheists don't defend this, it's only an example to show a point*
And no, not all worldviews or perspectives are "on equal footing." As above, some may be boiled down to a reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity). Others are simply unhelpful since their scope is so narrow. They give us nothing, answer us nothing, and provide us with no help with how to live. For example, Descartes famously assumed extreme skepticism and the only conclusion he could make was that he was thinking - "I think, therefore I am." A valid worldview since it does not "reduce to absurdity", but what does it get us? Can it explain any of our experiences? Can it provide us with a way of life? No, so I'm apt to find a worldview with a much broader scope.
A long post to say that presuppositionalism is superior to evidentialism because our presuppositions shape the way we view evidence. Even worse (many lately have observed this), we cannot "objectively" choose a worldview since we are automatically in one from birth - time, space, culture. Even while we consider our own and others', we have hundreds to thousands of years of cultural baggage that shapes even the choice we make.