Presuppositionalism: an attempt to avoid the obvious?

[Haven]

The presuppositional argument is:

1. Because of ‘sin,’ humans are incapable of evaluating claims without direct divine revelation.

2. The Bible (as it exists today) is the inerrant word of the Christian god and therefore direct divine revelation.

3. “ “ is therefore the only foundation for knowledge, since it gets around our “sin nature” and the illusion of the world.

4. Any evidence that would contradict a literal, inerrantist interpretation of the Bible (like virtually all of modern physics, biology and cosmology, ANE archeology, even textual criticism) is illusory and should be ignored. No matter the evidence, Biblical claims can’t be coherently rejected.

5. Even questioning a literal interpretation of the Bible, or subjecting its claims to reason, is an act of arrogant blasphemy.

This question-begging argument has become very popular in the last 15 years, since both academia and public skeptics have refuted virtually all evidential cases for Christianity. At least to me, they seem to be saying “if there is no evidence for our faith, then evidence doesn’t matter!” It feels very much like an appeal to convenience.

Debate question: is the presuppositional argument just an attempt to avoid the obvious conclusion: that there is no evidence for Christian claims?

[POI]

[Replying to Haven in post #1]

Question no. 1 to "presups" would be:

Since all humans are flawed, then how might any human distinguish messages from the divine, verses not?

The next question then becomes:

Since all 'answers' here will likely lead to faith, then we are back to square one --- before the above question was asks....

[Haven]

[Replying to Haven in post #1]
Since all 'answers' here will likely lead to faith, then we are back to square one --- before the above question was asks....

Presups can’t give any answer other than faith. Their doctrines of sola scriptura and sola fide don’t allow for anything else.

Which, yeah, destroys any case for the truth of their religion.

[1213]

...4. Any evidence that would contradict a literal, inerrantist interpretation of the Bible (like virtually all of modern physics, biology and cosmology, ANE archeology, even textual criticism)....

The problem with that is, there is no real physical evidence that contradicts the Bible.

[Haven]

...4. Any evidence that would contradict a literal, inerrantist interpretation of the Bible (like virtually all of modern physics, biology and cosmology, ANE archeology, even textual criticism)....

The problem with that is, there is no real physical evidence that contradicts the Bible.

This is demonstrably false.

-Geological evidence (in the form of rock layers, orogenic events, plate tectonics, volcanic activity [including records of past events]) precludes special creation, a young Earth and global flood.

-Biological evidence (the fossil record, comparative morphology, genetics) contradict a young Earth, special creation and a global flood.

-Cosmology obviously contradicts the Biblical narrative. The Earth is not older than the Sun and other stars as the Bible says, it is a sphere and not a flat disk, the speed of light means many stellar objects cannot fit into the Biblical age of the Earth, and planetary formation processes have been observed in other star systems.

-Even historical and archeological evidence contradicts the Biblical narrative. Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian and Akkadian records exist during the exact time as the supposed global flood, and signs of unbroken civilization in India, parts of Europe and the Americas show the same. The census of Quirinius mentioned in Luke never happened. There is no evidence for the Exodus or many of the huge, genocidal battles mentioned in the OT.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but you should get the idea. Your claim that there is no evidence that contradicts the Biblical narrative is clearly wrong and, in my opinion, amounts to willful denial of science and history.

[Difflugia]

willful denial of science and history.

That's the paradigm.

[Incognito]

[Replying to POI in post #2] I think they do believe they've come to understand their own thoughts and where they flow from, maybe want, desire, self love, or any number of things they have weeded out. They read, know thyself, and they read reason with God in self reflection and they think they have some kind of divine recipe for revelation at that point.

To their point, we don't even understand consciousness and scientists do have those lightbulb moments outside of any articulable method. Those lightbulb moments are vigorously tested through the scientific method and they do sometimes turn out to be on point. So your first presup for how Christians think is kind of intentionally dull. Even world powers put money behind the idea there could be more to consciousness and reality than a closed minded Atheist ever would by far.

[1213]

...4. Any evidence that would contradict a literal, inerrantist interpretation of the Bible (like virtually all of modern physics, biology and cosmology, ANE archeology, even textual criticism)....

The problem with that is, there is no real physical evidence that contradicts the Bible.

This is demonstrably false.

-Geological evidence (in the form of rock layers, orogenic events, plate tectonics, volcanic activity [including records of past events]) precludes special creation, a young Earth and global flood.

What is the physical evidence? All you offer is a claim with expectation that people believe you.

-Biological evidence (the fossil record, comparative morphology, genetics) contradict a young Earth, special creation and a global flood.

The problem with that is, one would have to believe what you say, without any solid evidence.

-Cosmology obviously contradicts the Biblical narrative. The Earth is not older than the Sun and other stars as the Bible says, it is a sphere and not a flat disk, the speed of light means many stellar objects cannot fit into the Biblical age of the Earth, and planetary formation processes have been observed in other star systems.

Bible doesn't say earth is a flat disk. This on itself discredits your entire post.

There is no way to check what is actually the age of earth and sun.

And there is no way to check is speed of light limited or the limit.

Please tell, what do you means with "planetary formation processes have been observed in other star systems"? What actually has been observed?

-Even historical and archeological evidence contradicts the Biblical narrative. Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian and Akkadian records exist during the exact time as the supposed global flood, and signs of unbroken civilization in India, parts of Europe and the Americas show the same.

When do you think the flood must have happened and why do you think so?

The census of Quirinius mentioned in Luke never happened.

How do you know?

There is no evidence for the Exodus

I think Jews are the evidence Exodus happened. And there is also smaller evidence, but they person who has closed his eyes cannot see them. For those who want to know more, I recommend to read Dr. Möllers the Exodus case.

or many of the huge, genocidal battles mentioned in the OT.

What do you think could be the evidence for such a genocidal battle?

[POI]

[Replying to Incognito in post #7]

I don't see anything worth responding to here? Outside ultimately resorting to 'faith', is there instead a (viable/reliable) way to discern the difference between a divine message, verse not?

[Incognito]

[Replying to POI in post #9] I'm not certain that there is. Literally thousands of sects and interpretations. A lot of it is parable. You quite literally have to view the process that the bible lays out as the method for removing bias for this kind of truth. It's not the scientific method, but assuming it works to grant you these little lightbulb moments and it aligns with scripture, it could very well be valid. There's no such thing as objective truth in philosophy that literally every person regardless of where they are intellectually, emotionally, and culturally can agree on at the same time. The closest you get are universal truths. If you do X, it almost always leads you to Y. Even then it's not so absolute, even the wicked prosper in one manner or another, maybe short lived, maybe for a lifetime. The individuality of it is what draws me to it. If it's group think rather than a personal revelation, what value is there in it? Maybe some, you can just defer to experts and follow their advice, but that's not going to give a person conviction. Maybe a false conviction. There are a lot of former Christians here.