I recently ran into someone that claimed that presuppositional arguments for the existence of God were the best arguments. Gabe, you know who you are. Anyway, we had some interesting discussions, and he seemed very knowledgeable about apologetics in general, and even seemed to understand that there were no actual proofs of the existence of God, claiming only that his “worldview” was consistent and the atheists “worldview” wasn’t.
I know this worldview stuff is very common, but I never paid enough attention to it to realize what was going on when people argue about it.
Why People Argue About Worldviews
Many apologists argue that their worldview accounts for X where the atheist worldview can’t. This is where the presupposition comes in. Atheists are generally stuck with empiricism to explain things where the presuppositional apologist merely has to claim that their deity did it, and they feel no necessity to explain how their deity did it.
This is a rather difficult position for an atheist to argue from, unless they squash the presuppositional part of things right out of the gate. Because so few atheists are experienced dismissing this, it is rarely done and the apologist feels that they have actually gotten somewhere with their argument.
The Argument for Presuppositions
Apologists will argue that we all must make presuppositions in order to be consistent. For example, we presuppose that what we see with our eyes actually exists. Because of this, we must allow presuppositions about everything as long as they are consistent.
I know this is a very minimalist explanation of presuppositional apologetics, but I believe it gets to the heart of the matter. Everything else I have heard about it only serves to muddy the waters, and doesn’t really expand the scope more than I have just explained it.
Properly Foundational vs. Presuppositional Apologetic Beliefs
A foundational belief is one that can’t be proven, but is also not axiomatic. A foundational belief is also something that generally must be true in order to explain our experiences in a way that makes sense. I call this type of foundational belief “properly” foundational. Other beliefs that are not necessary in order to explain our experiences I do not consider to be foundational at all, and certainly they are not “properly” foundational.
As for axioms, a thing is axiomatic when there is no other option. I think, therefore I am is axiomatic. If you ask yourself if you exist, you have already answered the question because you couldn’t ask the question if you didn’t exist. Axioms are the only things that we can say with any real certainty that we know. Everything else is a mixture of knowledge and belief.
The argument for allowing presuppositional arguments essentially claims that apologetic arguments are foundational arguments. It is certainly arguable that they are foundational at best, but I assert with confidence that they are not properly foundational, and in my epistemic opinion, that makes them not foundational at all.
There are reasons to accept that what you see with your eyes actually exists. This is a properly foundational belief. If you didn’t accept that as a fact, you would run around completely confused about the experiences you have. If you tell yourself that things don’t exist that you see, you must then explain why you feel the things you look at when you touch them. The fact that all your senses seem to validate each other can be explained in two ways, one is that your senses are telling you about actual things in the world. The other is by solipsism, where you believe that nothing exists and you just imagine it all. Solipsism has a fatal flaw though. If nothing exists outside the mind, what is the mind made of?
Trusting your senses are telling you about the actual world is necessary in order to make sense of your experiences. There is no way around it. Nobody can ignore their senses. It is the only method we have of getting information into our minds, so you must believe your senses in order to have anything to think about at all. Nothing makes sense without them.
There is no necessity to believe a god exists in order to function in the world on the other hand. For example, one of the arguments used in presuppositional apologetics is that logic can’t be explained without presupposing that God is the source. This is not properly foundational, since we only have to accept that logic works, not that God is the source for it. We also don’t have to even know why it works. We can very easily say we don’t know the reason behind logic or why it works, but use it anyway. In the same way, if you don’t know how the eye works, that doesn’t mean that you are being inconsistent by using your vision. It is not the source that is foundational, it is the mental experience that must be used in order to believe the things you believe.
My Worldview vs. Your Worldview
A presuppositional apologist will say that their worldview explains things where the atheist worldview doesn’t. This plays on the idea that if someone can make a consistent argument that explains all the facts, it must be true. It seems as though this kind of argument follows the scientific method, when in reality it is nowhere near scientific.
Science explains the process by which things happen, where theology just asserts that it happens by magic in essence. Magic doesn’t explain the process, it is a complete non-explanation. If I don’t know how an illusionist saws a woman in half, I can say it’s magic, but in reality there is a process. The explanation of the process an illusionist uses could be considered scientific, but just claiming that the magician doesn’t have to follow natural laws explains nothing and is certainly not scientific.
I regularly use my coffee pot as an example against the idea that a consistent worldview must be true. I can make a totally consistent argument that can’t be disproved, yet nobody thinks it is valid because it is absurd.
If I say that my coffee pot steals socks, and that is why everyone loses them, nobody can disprove me. People can say that my coffee pot doesn’t move, and I can say that it has the ability to stop time and teleport, and therefore there is no way that you could see it move. People could say that they have often found their lost socks, and I can say that those socks were just the lost ones and not the stolen ones, and the magic coffee pot isn’t the reason for every missing sock. People could say that it is impossible because there would be a large stockpile of missing socks, and I could say that the magic coffee pot transforms them into coat hangers and puts them randomly in people’s closets. Since most people have an overabundance of coat hangers that they can’t account for, they couldn’t disprove it.
Now, all of that seems rather silly, but it is consistent. It explains the things that people can’t normally explain, and it can’t be disproved. It enjoys the benefit of explaining missing socks and extra hangers at the same time. Because of this, if we are to accept presuppositional apologetics as valid, we must also accept the magic coffee pot as valid.
Conclusion
Presuppositional apologetics preys on the desires of people to hold to their beliefs, as well as the general public’s ignorance of epistemology and logic. In reality, it doesn’t do anything but say, “Magic man done it!” It doesn’t explain anything, and it is certainly proof of nothing.
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