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Tract: There is Certain Proof for God’s Existence

June 9, 2012 By 2 Comments

Is there certain proof that the biblical God exists? Yes.

 

Tract by Colin Lawson 


God is: The triune, self-existent, timeless, spaceless, changeless, immaterial, uncaused, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, Creator of everything outside of Himself, who exists by the necessity of His own nature. It belongs to His nature to exist, and it is impossible for Him to not exist. He comes before all and thus He is logically primitive; all facts and possibility of fact stem from His thoughts. He created everything and Hid necessary nature and decisions determine the very limits of possibility.
The proof is that without Him (if He did not exist and reveal Himself to mankind) we couldn’t know anything at all. He has revealed Himself in a limited way in nature (Genereal revelation), and in a more explicit way in Scripture, the Bible (Special Revelation).
Only the triune God of the Bible has the ontic attributes to provide the preconditions of intelligibility, which are (among other things)…
1.) The laws of logic (necessary for reasoning)
2.) Objective moral values (necessary for ethics)
3.) The uniformity of nature (necessary for the principle of induction and thus for science and technology)
4.) Basic reliability of senses
5.) Basic reliability of memory

Here’s How the Biblical God Accounts for the Laws of Logic


(1) God accounts for the laws of logic in that they are a reflection of the way God thinks. God cannot contradict Himself (2 Timothy 2:13), and thus the universe He created cannot contradict itself (we’ll never find a married bachelor or a round triangle). (2) He accounts for objective moral values (moral values that are valid and binding on all people, in all places, & at all times, regardless of whether anyone believes in them) in the fact that His moral decrees are determined by His holy (Isaiah 6:3), eternal (1 Timothy 1:17), and unchanging (Malachi 3:6) character and nature. (3) He accounts for the uniformity of nature (the idea that the physical laws of the universe will continue to act in a law-like fashion) because He’s the Creator of everything outside of Himself (Colossians 1:16), and upholds His creation by His consistent power (Hebrews 1:3) and he has promised a certain degree of regularity in the universe, like the seasons (Genesis 8:22), which requires the physical “laws” to stay constant. (4 & 5) He accounts for the basic reliability of our senses & memory because He designed us and our sensory organs and thinking minds, and intended that man care for the created order (Genesis 2:5) and charged man with that very task (Genesis 2:15) and also to have dominion (under God) over the earth (Genesis 1:28).

All of those things are essential for rationality of any kind to be possible, yet none of them make sense in a Godless perspective of reality. (1) The atheist/agnostic has no way to account for the existence of immaterial universals like the laws of logic, let alone the idea that they don’t (and won’t) change suddenly at any moment. (2) Nor can the secularist account for moral values that are valid and binding on everyone, everywhere, at all times. The best the secular world can say is each culture (or the world) decides what’s right and wrong, which could actually justify pedophilia should society (or the world) decide to allow it. (3) The secular approach to reality can’t account for the constancy of the laws of physics either, nor can he justify the assumption that they’ll be the same tomorrow as they are today. (4 & 5) The basic reliability of our senses and memory can’t be accounted for by a secular view either. What we perceive with our senses and what we remember could just be an illusion brought on as a side effect of an evolutionary mechanism that happened to have survival value in the past.

Other religions won’t help either. The closest match to the biblical God from another religion is Allah of Islam, but Allah has no attributes to speak of. Muslims hold to the doctrine of Tanzih, which maintains that nothing about Allah’s nature can be know by man; only his will can be known. Thus Allah cannot account for the preconditions of intelligibility. One could arbitrarily posit a hypothetical god that has the biblical God’s attributes, but there’s no revelation from that god to mankind, so they couldn’t possibly know about him. And if they don’t know that that god exists, they cannot appeal to him as the basis for their knowledge.

Three quick additional points to ponder: reality reflects the Trinity, not a unitarian god.
Three aspects to God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

Three dimensions to the physical world: height, width, depth.

Three aspects to time: past, present, future

Thus non-Christian worldviews provide no basis for knowing (much less proving) anything at all.

In summary, (1) A God who has the biblical God’s attributes would have to exist in order for the preconditions of intelligibility to exist. That rules out all secular perspectives of reality. (2) We couldn’t know about those precious preconditions without knowledge of that God’s existence (since only He can account for them). That rules out all other religious perspectives. (3) We couldn’t know about this God’s existence unless He has revealed Himself to Mankind. That rules out all deistic and general theistic perspectives. In other words, the triune God of the Bible is proven by the impossibility of the contrary: if He did not exist and reveal Himself to mankind, we couldn’t know anything. Yet we clearly do know things and can’t avoid having knowledge (to claim we don’t know anything for sure is itself a knowledge claim). Therefore, the biblical God exists.

What this means for your future:

Let me ask you a few questions. Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen something (regardless of the value)? Looked with lust (i.e., committed adultery of the heart as Jesus put it, Matthew 5:28)? Ever taken God’s name in vain? We’ve all broken the Ten Commandments. Deep down you know you’ve broken many (if not all) of them. If you were to die today and God were to judge you by His righteous standard, the Ten Commandments, would you be innocent or guilty? Jesus said that all liars will have their place in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8), and the apostle Paul said that no thief or adulterer will enter the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). So if you were to die right now, would you go to heaven or hell? Be honest. A good and just Judge would have to carry out justice, or else that Judge would be corrupt Himself. You would go to hell. We all would because of our own choices. That’s the bad news. Would you like to know the good news? God loves you so much that He sent His one and only Son to suffer and die on the cross in your place. When Christ was on the cross, He took the sins of the whole world upon Himself. He took your punishment so that you wouldn’t have to. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” You broke the law, and Jesus paid your fine. Then Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, defeating death. In other words, God, in His rich love and mercy, has offered you a pardon for your crimes against Him. If you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, repent and forsake all sins, and trust in Christ alone for salvation, then Christ’s death on the cross will count as your punishment, and God will forgive you and grant you everlasting life. He’ll change you from the inside out, and make you a whole new person in Christ. Please listen to your conscience and get right with God today, because tomorrow is never guaranteed, and eternity is a long time to spend in hell. Get right with God and read the Bible everyday (taking it in context), and obey what you read.

Mr. Lawson is a guest blogger who aims to reach the lost with the truth found in Christ. His ackowledments are in the longer version of this post Here

email us to receive the full post (it’s much larger). Feel free to print this and hand it out as a tract.

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see Mike Robinson’s eBook Truth and The Reason for God Here   or in Paperback.

Filed Under: Apologetics, Christian Philosophy, Covenantal Apologetics Tagged With: ,

The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined by Paul K. Moser: Book Review

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Evidence for God: Review by Mike Robinson

 
Paul K. Moser (Professor & Chairperson Dept. of Philosophy: Loyola University, Chicago) relates epistemic issues to the evidence for the existence of God with masterly skill in “The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined.” Moser, author of “The Elusive God,” paints a far more textured picture of epistemology’s crucial role in determining genuine evidence for the existence of the Christian God than the majority of contemporary apologists.Along the way Professor Moser attempts to deflate various arguments for theism that play down the ontic majesty of the true and living God. Additionally he cogently refutes naturalism with precision and care (pp. 46-84). His persuasive and inexpugnable contestations refuting sundry schools of naturalism alone make this volume worth purchasing. Professor Moser also convincingly discredits fideism as he provides the reader with a thoughtful case against blind faith.The book “develops volitional theism against the background that includes critical assessment of prominent competing positions” (Naturalism, Fideism, Traditional Proofs, Plantinga’s epistemology – p. 45). The book’s claims are launched with an erudite quote from H.H. Farmer: “Many questions are answered wrongly, not because the evidence is contradictory or inadequate, but because the mind through its fundamental dispositions and presuppositions is out of focus with the only kind of evidence which is really available” (p. 1).

Moser controverts numerous forms of Naturalism including:

•   Quine’s (p. 68-70)

•    Ontological Naturalism
a. Eliminative ontological naturalism
b. Noneliminative reductive ontological naturalism
c. Noneliminative nonreductive ontological naturalism

•   Methodological naturalism in three dominant forms.
All this within the context of a refutation of Scientism (pp. 76-87) while he opposes the empirical attempt to prove the existence of God (p. 87).

The author rejects classical proofs (pp. 142-182) along with historical and evidential methods as systems that prove too little (finite data V. an infinite ontology: the God of Christian Theism), yet he admits to their possible psychological or aesthetic apologetic value (p. 160). The apologist also denies that Behe’s irreducible complexity and ID science are epistemically satisfying approaches (p. 166-167).

The often astute professor alogically and unbiblically rejects God’s sovereignty in the salvation of souls and the enlightening of minds (pp. 131-142 and misc.). He builds a neurasthenic case for the divine call that results in “nonargument evidence of God’s reality” not as “volitionally static” forasmuch as we need to “avoid … a bias against evidence of the divine reality that comes from the volitional pressure of a transcendent call and the resulting transformation of a willing human recipient who thereby becomes a personifying evidence of God’s reality” (p. 150). Nonetheless Moser’s previous arguments against traditional proofs (finite, mutable, perishing material things lack the epistemic ability and ontic necessities to prove an infinite, immutable, imperishable God) cuts off the branch he’s resting his arguments on: Christians become the “evidence of God’s reality in receiving and reflecting God’s moral character to others” (p. ix); inasmuch as Christians are also mutable and finite, thus under Moser’s epistemic scrutiny, they fail to offer proof for the awesome infinite and immutable God revealed in scripture. The professor’s argument provides the grounds that confute his own position.

see E-book that contends for the sure Existence of God Here

The author claims that the evidence that has epistemically virtuous rights streams from the personal, perfectly loving God who alone deserves our worship and obedience. He maintains that this is the only justifiable evidence because God is elusive and all that is within the cosmos is epistemically diminutive. The seeker should open his heart and find salient evidence for the reality of God in the lives of believers who exhibit the love that they have received from the Lord. I personally haven’t met a fellow Christian who lived a life that is morally adequate enough to be proof for the existence of God; furthermore I have not observed the love of a believer that was so impressive as to compel one to believe in God. The only moral source of love that compels saving faith is found in Christ Jesus.

Moser offers a formidable case against fideism and mysticism (p. 88-125), but his central allegation against classical & evidential proofs implies that he’s one who rejects propositional and evidential proof, so he seems to slide into a type of moderate fideism himself, although he avouches “moderate evidentialism” (p. 135).

He advocates the amorphous view that “God’s reality is increasingly available and salient to me as I, myself, am increasingly willing to become such evidence–that is evidence of God’s reality.” This contention is his chief argument for Christian theism (p. 172). One reason Moser contends that God’s existence cannot be proved in propositional apologetic terms is: God is epistemically veiled so the lives of believers are the only sufficient evidence that is available, moreover we need to “let God be God” (p. 28). God is concealed since “the reality of the God is knowable firsthand by humans on the basis of salient and conclusive, if elusive, evidence.”

The author endeavors to rebut the Reformed view of soteriology in relation to apologetic pursuits as he asserts that some “people assume that God would have a magic cognitive bullet in divine self-revelation whereby God guarantees that the divinely offered evidence of God’s existence will actually be willingly received by humans. Sometimes this dubious assumption is clothed in talk of `divine sovereignty,’ but this approach, in any case, involves a serious mistake” (pp. 33-34). However Romans chapter one informs the world that all men know that God exists but they suppress the truth in unrighteousness; furthermore the totality of holy writ discloses the idea that God is the agent who opens the human heart and calls men to Himself by grace alone.

The professor states: “Conclusive firsthand evidence for divine reality is, I’ll contend, purposively available to humans, that is, available in a way, and only in a way, that accommodates the distinctive purposes of a perfectly loving God. The latter purposes, we’ll see, would aim non-coercively but authoritatively to transform human purposes to agree with divine purposes, despite human resistance.”

Moser’s work may not have compelling positive and direct proof for theism but he does present an extremely effective refutation of naturalism and fideism along with a moderate challenge to the traditional arguments for God’s existence. Even though I affirm a dissimilar apologetic method and epistemic approach, I enjoyed this volume immensely and gained additional insight in ways to defend the faith.

My method advocates a certain argument for the existence of God. Additionally in contrast to Moser I argue that God alone furnishes all the a priori essentials for the necessary epistemic equipment utilized in all science and research. God has the ontic attributes of omniscience, immutability, and omnipotence (universal reach) to be the ground for the immaterial universal and immutable rational and ethical necessities. Any position that rejects Christian theism ultimately fails; thus whatever evidence one discovers, one must discern and process that evidence with the rational tools noted above.
God Does Exist!: Defending the faith using presuppositional apologetics, evidence, and the impossibility of the contrary

 

Moser’s book here
Filed Under: Apologetics, Book Reviews, Classical Apologetics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

New Book: Presuppositional Apologetics Critiques the Watchtower

September 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Presuppositional Apologetics Critiques the Jehovah’s Witnesses
New Apologetic Book
Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Examine the Jehovah’s Witnesses: How Van Til’s Apologetic Refutes The Watchtower by Mike A Robinson:

This book is fresh, unique, and groundbreaking because it’s a Van Tilian critique of this growing cult. Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Examine the Jehovah’s Witnesses is a biblical and philosophical critique of the faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower organization. The author has witnessed to Jehovah’s Witnesses for over twenty-five years and he exposes their inconsistencies and proves that rationally, philosophically, and biblically this high-demand religion cannot be true.

This new potent resource equips you to refute the claims of the Watchtower and counter the efforts of the JW missionaries. Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Examine the Jehovah’s Witnesses is an exclusive work that includes analysis of the theological and philosophical content of JW doctrine using biblical and theoretical truth: a powerful resource for those reaching out to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Purchase this counter-Cult Book HERE

Filed Under: Presuppositional Epistemology, World Religions Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Book Review: Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi

August 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Knowing and Being: a book review by Mike Robinson

Epistemic Rights and Ontic Necessities

That lady in the white lab coat is exceptionally astute and she’s a major player within the global scientific community, but she is so befogged about the source and the proper criterion for justified knowledge that she subjects herself to self-stultification forasmuch as she relies on brute empiricism as her epistemic ground. Herein Michael Polanyi deploys powerful and commanding epistemic fog lights to shine the blazing light of truth on epistemology in relation to science and the pursuit truth (Polanyi, 1891-1976, was a European chemist who became a groundbreaking philosopher and epistemologist).

In the last third of his academic life the author searched for truth and a definitive criterion for knowledge itself. Dr. Polanyi proposed that one must rework the ground and fount for epistemic virtues and privileges as he attempted to partially comprise an accurate theory of knowledge enjoined to the nature of man’s cognitive apparatus and the comprehension of epistemic intricacy/complexity.

Polanyi: “I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.”

This volume consist of 14 interrelated essays (accumulated by Marjorie Grene) that convey the progress of Polanyi’s epistemology first offered in “Science, Faith, and Society.” Polanyi offers unique epistemic insights as he asserts that epistemic rights are obtained by central and subsidiary aspects of awareness while fixing on the article at hand while focusing on less important derivative things as epistemic backdrops. For Polanyi “normative structures such as interpretive frameworks, or even languages, work like hammers… I indwell them, I pour myself into them, to attend beyond me a further focus or project. All knowing involves integrative orientation from subsidiary to focal, from `from’ to `to’ and beyond”

He asserts: “So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language.” Polanyi emphasizes that the predicament of contemporary epistemic questions are usually left unasked as modernity focuses on alleged detachment and objectivity of scientific knowledge as it too often ignores the necessary ethical structures. Polanyi deems that epistemic rights and true truth arise from internal indications to external facts and concrete evidence. Consequently, to ascertain proper epistemic rights, one is required to build a theory from the web of the ontic reality of biological things and this incorporates the mind as well.

He opines: “Of course language manifests a belief only if we use its words with the implied acceptance of their appositeness.” One is not required to limit oneself to Polanyi’s epistemic presentation to admire his genius and gain exceptional insight into the formation of a lucid epistemic apparatus that yields epistemic virtues.

On pre-theoretical commitments concerning science: “These maxims and the art of interpreting them may be said to constitute the premises of science but I prefer to call them our scientific beliefs. These premises or beliefs are embodied in a tradition, the tradition of science.”

This volume is a necessary addition to the library of epistemologists, ministers, philosophers, and scientists. Those who avow TAs will find much to integrate in their epistemic scheme.

Polanyi: “I shall suggest, on the contrary, that all communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, and that all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.”

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MichaelRobinson

Filed Under: Christian Philosophy, Covenantal Apologetics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Book: Presuppositional Apologetics Refutes the Jehovah’s Witnesses

November 10, 2010 By 2 Comments

Presuppositional Apologetics Refutes the Jehovah’s Witnesses

New Apologetic Book:
Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Examine the Jehovah’s Witnesses: How Van Til’s Apologetic Refutes The Watchtower by Mike Robinson:

This book is innovative, unique, and groundbreaking because it applies Presuppositional scrutiny to the Watchtower. It is a biblical and philosophical look at the faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower organization. The author has witnessed to Jehovah’s Witnesses for over twenty-five years and he exposes their inconsistencies and proves that rationally, philosophically, and biblically this high-demand religion cannot be true.

This new potent resource equips you to refute the claims of the Watchtower and counter the efforts of the JW missionaries. Christian Philosophy and Presuppositions Examine the Jehovah’s Witnesses is an exclusive work that includes analysis of the theological and philosophical content of JW doctrine using biblical and theoretical truth: a powerful resource for those reaching out to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

purchase HERE

Filed Under: Book Reviews, World Religions Tagged With: , , , , ,

Book Review: The Defense of the Faith by Cornelius Van Til

April 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The Defense of the Faith (Paperback) Cornelius Van Til was born in 1895, in the Netherlands and at the age of ten his family moved to Indiana. Later Van Til earned a Th.M. and a Ph.D. “The Defense of the Faith” is part of Van Til’s groundbreaking presuppositional apologetic method. This volume is essential for any Christian philosopher and apologist. In this treatise, the author aims to press the most scripturally faithful and effectual apologetic method to defend the Faith and present the Triune God to the lost. Van Til distinguishes his system from that of RCC, neo-orthodoxy of Barth, and others.

Van Til writes: “The whole problem of knowledge has constantly been that of bringing the one and the many together. When man looks about him and within him, he sees that there is a great variety of facts. The question that comes up at once is whether there is any unity in this variety, whether there is one principle in accordance with which all these many things appear and occur. All non-Christian thought, if it has utilized the idea of a supra-mundane existence at all, has used this supra-mundane existence as furnishing only the unity or the a priori aspect of knowledge, while it has maintained that the a posteriori aspect of knowledge is something that is furnished by the universe.” He adds for one to have any knowledge that “… there must be in God an absolute system of knowledge” (p 61). Furthermore he presses the necessity of scripture: “But I do, of course, confess that what Scripture teaches may properly be spoken of as a system of truth. God identifies the Scriptures as his Word. And he himself, as he tells us, exists as an internally self-coherent being. His revelation of himself to man cannot be anything but internally coherent” (p. 205).

Many have enthusiastically embraced his forceful apologetic as he advocates: “The natural man must be blasted out of his hideouts… the Reformed apologist throws down the gauntlet and challenges his opponent to a duel of life and death from the start.” Van Til defines some important terms: “Philosophy, as usually defined, deals with a theory of reality, with a theory of knowledge, and with a theory of ethics. That is to say philosophies usually undertake to present a life and world view. They deal not only with that which man can directly experience by means of his senses but also, and ofttimes especially, with the presuppositions of experience. In short, they deal with that which Christian theology speaks of as God. On the other hand Christian theology deals not only with God; it deals also with the world…. Philosophy and science deal more especially with man in his relation to the cosmos and theology deals more especially with man in his relation to God. But this is only a matter of degree.”

Van Til taught, inspired, and mentored many erudite scholars. Quotes from some of the brightest:
William Edgar states: “Van Til showed the necessity of knowing God as a basis for knowing anything at all.”
John Frame opines: “Van Til’s apologetics is essentially simple, however complicated its elaborations. It makes two basic assertions: (1) that human beings are obligated to presuppose God in all of their thinking, and (2) that unbelievers resist this obligation in every aspect of thought and life.” (Westminster Theological Journal Vol. 47, 1985).
K. Scott Oliphint asserts: “Van Til, though speaking in another context, approves of all kinds of reasoning based on the priority of revelation.”
Greg Bahnsen, a popular Van Tilian scholar and the man “atheists feared the most,” stated that “For Van Til, like Augustine, reason is not the platform (precondition) for faith, but vice versa” (Greg L Bahnsen, “Van Til’s Apologetic,” p. 54). Bahnsen adjoins: “It could be said that Van Til has labored to rid our thinking about apologetics, theology, philosophy, and evangelism of misleading dichotomies between them – polarizations that serve to overlook the ethically qualified character of man’s every intellectual ability and effort. There are to be no other gods before the face of the Lord (according to the first commandment, Ex. 20:3), no other authorities over our thinking that detract from submission to the revealed word of God. The Lord’s claim upon us, even upon our thinking and reasoning, is absolute and unchallengeable – just because He is the Lord (Rom. 3:4; 9:20; 11:33-34). Therefore, “take heed lest there shall be anyone who robs you by means of his philosophy, even vain deceit, which is after the tradition of men, after the rudimentary principles of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2:8). In that light, we must not artificially separate positive statement (theology) from its defense (apologetics), or separate the appeal for mental change (evangelism) from the intellectual reason for such change (apologetics), or separate general reflection upon conceptual foundations, (philosophy) from the particular content of Christian concepts (theology, apologetics). Van Til rejects each of these dichotomies in order that our thinking and scholarship will not be divided into two phases, the first being autonomous and religiously neutral, and the second being submissive to Christ and biblically faithful. For Van Til, like Augustine, reason is not the platform (precondition) for faith, but vice versa” (“Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis,” p. 54)
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But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases (Psalms 115:3).

As a PA I also would add: A certain and simple argument for the existence of God is: Without God one cannot account for anything. God is the ground and source for the laws of logic, moral law, mathematics, and everything else in the cosmos. This is an argument that is absolutely true. The truth is simple and it is powerful. One must employ changeless universal truths when one assesses, ponders, and communicates things and their meaning in our world. Only God, who is all-knowing and all-powerful, can ground immutable universals. The great thing about employing this argument is that it grows in power when the unbeliever attacks it. The argument grows in force because the unbeliever must use the laws of logic to make his intellectual challenge. These laws of thought require God. For God alone supplies the pre-essential environment for the laws of logic. Thus every time an unbeliever rationally attacks theism he is actually demonstrating that God lives. Without God (He alone can ground the laws of logic) he cannot make any rational assertion. The old science-fiction movie that has a huge electric monster on the loose illustrates this point. The monster in this thriller grows larger and stronger every time someone uses a weapon in attempting to kill it. The monster is ready to take over America, and the President orders the army to hit it with an atomic bomb. The troops launch the bomb and as the mushroom cloud slowly starts to dissipate, when the smoke clears, they are stunned by the horror of horrors: the energy monster survived. Not only does the monster survive, he now is ten times larger. The energy monster absorbed the massive energy from the bomb. It did not get weaker, but grew in size and strength. Similarly, the unbeliever will attempt to fire intellectual weapons at this “argument from the impossibility of the contrary”(Bahnsen). Nevertheless, all their attacks will only be consumed by the truth, while the defense of the truth grows stronger and larger. There is nothing a skeptic can assert without ultimately relying on theism, since God alone provides the pre-essential environment for the laws of logic that must be utilized in their attacks. Therefore the unbeliever’s argument will always presuppose God because the unbeliever cannot supply the preconditions for the non-physical, unchanging, universal and atemporal laws of logic (God is non-physical, unchanging, universal in power and reach, and atemporal).

The triune God is the preexisting foundation for all debate, even a debate over the existence of God. Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it… Therefore let all the house of Israel know ASSUREDLY that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:24 & 36).
God Does Exist!: Defending the faith using presuppositional apologetics, evidence, and the impossibility of the contrary

Presuppositional Apologetics Examines Mormonism: How Van Til’s Apologetic Refutes Mormon Theology

One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions

There Are Moral Absolutes: How to Be Absolutely Sure That Christianity Alone Supplies
Also see work by James Anderson, Michael Butler, Don Collect.

Prove the existence of God.
Filed Under: Apologetics, Book Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Book Review of Greg Bahnsen’s Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended

April 23, 2010 By 3 Comments

 

greg bahnsen stated defended reviewThe publishers bequeath eager Van Tilians a new and superb offering from the late Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen. Bahnsen, as a formal debater, was regarded as the “man atheists feared the most.” This new book, “Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended,” demonstrates some of the reasons for such an assessment. The author has been deeply missed and this volume of systematic apologetics is a blessing to all who sought a fresh resource that would be compatible with his earlier books. This precise and orderly defense of the faith was not available because it was lost. It was only recently discovered and brought to press. Bahnsen’s philosophical labor is clear, succinct, and commanding. The editors supply the brilliance of Bahnsen’s apologetic in a methodical and lucid manner (Joel McDurmon put in a lot of hard toil as Editor). This is a brand new publication that helps make Van Til’s remarkable thought accessible to ordinary believers as well as the most widely read scholars.

In this volume we have apologetic clarity and a philosophical depth illuminating issues surrounding a faithful defense of Christian theism. I encourage all to purchase this stupendous edition of Bahnsen’s scholarly toil to help equip the church to proclaim and defend the truth of the ontological Trinity.

 

Bahnsen offers many unique gems in this never-before-published volume including powerful and lengthy critiques of the apologetic systems of:

- Gordon H. Clark
- Edward Carnell
- Francis Schaeffer
- Ronald Nash (this one is brief but convincing).

Additionally he provides a plethora of Vantilian type quotes from Clark (2 ½ pages), Carnell, and Schaeffer. This alone makes “PASD” worth much more than the cost. This is an absolutely necessary apologetic resource for the active apologist.

Greg Bahnsen wrote that the unbeliever “has no intelligible place to stand, no consistent epistemology, no justification for meaningful discourse, predication, or argumentation.” Other than that, you’re fine! Bahnsen goes on to lay bare anti-theism: he writes that “the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. When the perspective of God’s revelation is rejected, then the unbeliever is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions for knowledge and meaningful experience.” Only Christian theism can supply the pre-essentials needed for debate, evidence, and knowledge. Bahnsen asserts that “the proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we could not be able to prove anything.”

Bahnsen was once described as “the man atheists fear most” because of the controversy surrounding the Bahnsen-Martin debate, which was cancelled by Michael Martin.

Some quotes: “In various forms, the fundamental argument advanced by the Christian apologist is that the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. When the perspective of God’s revelation is rejected, then the unbeliever is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions of knowledge and meaningful experience. To put it another way: the proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we would not be able to prove anything.” “An unbeliever is not simply an unbeliever at separate points; his antagonism is rooted in an overall philosophy (Col. 2.8) which is according to the world’s tradition; thus is an enemy of God in his mind (Col. 1.21; Jam. 4.4) and uses his mind to nullify or obviate God’s word (Mk. 7.8-13).”

“In what way does knowledge go beyond belief? Knowledge includes having justification or good reason to support whatever it is you believe. Imagine that I believe there are thirty-seven square miles in a particular city, and imagine also that it just so happens that this claim is accurate – but imagine as well that I simply got this answer by guessing (rather than doing measurements, mathematics or checking an almanac, etc.). I believed something which happened to be true, but we would not say that I had ‘knowledge’ in this case because I had no justification for what I believed. When we claim to know that something is true, we are thereby claiming to have adequate evidence, proof or good reason for it.”

“Imagine a person who comes in here tonight and argues ‘no air exists’ but continues to breathe air while he argues. Now intellectually, atheists continue to breathe – they continue to use reason and draw scientific conclusions [which assumes an orderly universe], to make moral judgments [which assumes absolute values] – but the atheistic view of things would in theory make such ‘breathing’ impossible. They are breathing God’s air all the time they are arguing against him.”
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I would add: Suppose my wife took my i-pod off our dinning table and put it on an obscure shelf before she ate lunch. When I returned home and found it missing on the table, I phoned my wife. She said that she needed space to eat and so she put my iPod away. I asked her how I could find my iPod now that she moved it to an unknown location. She told me that she had put a post-it note on the iPod. That, of course, would not have done me, her befuddled husband any good. The portable stereo would have been hidden, and a note on a hidden stereo was lost to me until my wife informed me where she put it. Such is the problem of an unsaved person. He is lost, and cannot use his own reason or experience to find his way to truth. He is lost, and his autonomous reason is lost with him. The only way he can find the truth is through an objective, unchanging source. The God of the Bible is the unchanging rational bedrock and fountainhead.

The biblical God is the pre-necessity for self-knowledge and the intelligibility of the world. Without God, man is lost, holding his own note of a man-made holy book. Only through Yahweh and His revelation can a man be found and have an objective basis for truth. God is the absolute and transcendental necessity for the intelligibility of all human apprehension. He is the precondition for the grounding and understanding of knowledge. Buddhism, Hinduism, and atheism cannot justify knowledge or truth. If you do not presuppose the truth of God in Christ, you cannot make sense out of the cosmos and all of reality. Christianity is true not because it makes better sense, but because it alone supplies the foundation for logic; it is true because without it you cannot make sense of anything.

All other religions, philosophies, and worldviews lack the transcendentally required precondition (Yahweh) for predication, intelligibility, logic, ethics, and truth. Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Only the transcendent, aphysical, invariant, and multi-personal-unified God can provide the necessary preconditions for the transcendent, aphysical, invariant, and multi-unified laws of logic. I argue from the shoulders of giants as I press the truth that there is “absolutely certain proof for the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism.

Even non-Christians presuppose its truth while they verbally reject it.” We ask the nonbeliever “what are the conditions that make thought possible?” Only the Triune God can furnish those preconditions to establish the rational flooring for intelligibility. Van Til called this truth “the method of implication into the truth of God a transcendental method. That is, we must seek to determine what presuppositions are necessary to any object of knowledge in order that it may be intelligible to us.” Transcendental scrutiny of anti-theism demonstrates that it is self-destructive inasmuch as it fails to give what it does not possess. Man is devoid of eternal omniscience, aseity, sovereignty, and omnipotence.

Bahnsen set forth transcendental analysis as that “which asks what the preconditions are for the intelligibility of human experience. Under what conditions is it possible, or what would also need to be true in order for it to be possible, to make sense of one’s experience of the world? To seek the transcendental conditions for knowing is to ask what is presupposed by any intelligent experience whatsoever.” Humankind does not need to exist for the intelligibility of the universe. Mere men cannot supply the transcendental conditions that are needed for the laws of logic, love, and morality.

Van Til contended that “the general precedes the particular” in our reality. This implies that the anthropology of atheism cannot supply the general and universal realities that must be present, for the necessary and unavoidable transcendental conditions listed above.

Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen had heart valve implant surgery on December 5, 1995. After the completion of the operation, serious complications developed within twenty-four hours. He then became comatose for several days and died on December 11, 1995 at the age of forty-seven.

One Way to God: Christian Philosophy and Presuppositional Apologetics Examine World Religions

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