Musings on Presuppositional Apologist's Script

This is a little outdated. I wrote this post a few years ago, but never published it. Presuppositionalist apologists are still out there and people still get confused by the tactics used by the presuppers. For that reason, I am going to go ahead and share it now.

For any who are unfamiliar, presuppositional apologetics is one kind of Christian apologetics in which the apologist makes the claim that no worldview can be made sense of unless one presupposes the existence of the god of the Bible. They claim that no other worldview can account logic and, apart from divine revelation from Yahweh, no one can justify any knowledge claim.

If you want to hear a presuppositional apologist make his arguments, here is a video posted by one of the most well known presup apologists, Sye Ten Brugencate.

Presuppositionalist apologists tend to stick to a script. One line of questioning used by Sye Ten Bruggencate and other presuppositionalists is related to how we can know whether or not our own capacity for rational thought is in tact. There are people who do not have the capability to reason properly. How do you know you are able to reason correctly? Most people,  theists or atheists, respond by saying their experience confirms they're able to reason, or their reasoning is verified through other people, or a combination of the two.

The response from the presuppositionalist is that we are using our reason to justify our reasoning. This is circular. They claim it is viciously circular (as opposed to belief that the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true, which is virtuously circular). Their solution is to depend on an omniscient deity (Yahweh) who reveals the truth that their reasoning is valid in a way that they can be certain.

Here is a list of questions I believe are helpful in exposing some of the core problems with presuppositionalist apologetics.

• How do you know that you are not a person who has had a "divine revelation" but that is not merely part of a delusion caused by your faulty cognitive function?
• How is that revelation received by the believer? If revelation is received by their senses, senses can be flawed. If it is received by their mind, their minds can be flawed. If it is some other means, how can they know the other means of conveyance are reliable?
• I have met some believers who have had impaired rational capacity because of mental problems. Do these people get divine revelation that tells them they cannot reason properly? How can we know for certain that whatever revelation we're getting is from a true deity or the one true deity if you prefer?
• Is this revelation testable? Can we, for example, test a believer's capacity to judge their own rationality or the rationality of others and measure how accurate they are?

The presuppositionalists tend to act like the capacity to reason is an all or nothing function in our minds, but there is certainly a continuum from people who are entirely incapable of abstract thought, or in some cases, any thought at all, to people whose capacity to reason is very high and well honed. There is no one whose capacity to reason is perfect. If an infallible deity is involved in a true believer's reason radar, then it stands to reason that their ability to pick out rational people from non-rational people would exceed the techniques employed by tools used by psychologists and experts in the field of human mental function.

That's all for now. I just had these thoughts when I encountered another presuppositionalist the other day and wanted to put my own thoughts out there. I'm not even sure exactly who it was that was involved with the conversation I was listening to on YouTube, but those are the questions I wanted to ask. I got frustrated that the skeptic in the conversation didn't press in that direction.

If you have an opinion about Christian presuppositionalism, about this particular line of reasoning, or about my responses in this post, please comment.

Thanks for reading,
Gavagai