Refutation Of Presuppositional Apologetics

You can presuppose anything.  I could presuppose that alien life exists, that I'm inside a virtual simulation very comparable to the Matrix, that my car is a Transformer that has never transformed in my presence, that everyone around me is a figment of my own distorted imagination, or that I was placed on the earth moments ago with false implanted memories of every previous action of mine or event in my life.  Some things one could assume or believe, of course, cannot be true--it is impossible for married bachelors or bachelorettes to exist, for instance.  Assuming something by necessity means that one is accepting it without proof, and assumptions are always either unverified, or they would not be assumptions, or outright false.

Does this method of investigating reality work?  No!!  Not if the one investigating seeks actual knowledge.  Yet there are Christians who label themselves presuppositional apologists whose entire philosophy is a series of monstrously, laughably false assumptions.  They don't start with the necessary, inviolable laws of logic and the existence of the self, like Descartes did.  They don't start with science (of course, it is impossible for science to be the very foundation of knowledge; logic and introspection are).  They start with the assumption that God exists instead.  In fact, they claim that one has to assume that God exists to even have a legitimate basis for thinking logic and the human capacity for deductive reasoning are reliable, when 1) it is impossible for logic to be false (a thing cannot not be what it is and deductive reasoning cannot not be true, and anyone arguing against them must use them, meaning they can only be correct if they are entirely wrong) and 2) logic still both exists and is true by necessity even if there is no deity whatsoever (if there is no god or goddess, a mind is still a mind, a tree a tree, and so on).  Truth still exists if there is no god; after all, it would be true that God does not exist!

Now, presuppositionalists might respond with the correct observation that things like alien life and the simulation hypothesis, referenced in the opening paragraph, are not necessary for things like morality, beauty, and so on.  According to them, we must knowingly or unknowingly borrow from Christianity to believe in them at all.  As if those things exist by pure necessity!  If they depend on God, one must first prove that God exists, and not the other way around!  But just assuming that morality or beauty exists--so that one is forced to believe in God if one wants to remain philosophically consistent--is intellectually unjustifiable and indulges in certain grievous logical fallacies.  Presupposing one thing to protect other presuppositions is inherently irrational.



Presuppositionalism reeks of a multitude of
logical fallacies.  Good luck trying to bring
a presuppositionalist to acknowledge this, though!

You can find what might seem to be evidence for a wide variety of true and false claims if you start out by assuming they are true and only then try to demonstrate why.  But seeming evidence is not proof, and assumptions do not amount to knowledge.  Christians I know do this frequently by selecting a doctrinal position beforehand and then finding scattered verses that, with a very biased assumption, seem to teach what they want the text to say to begin with.  Oftentimes, when dealing with the Bible or any other source of knowledge, one must identify what knowledge about a given subject is undeniable and abstain from making further judgment because there is not sufficient knowledge to proceed beyond that.  For instance, people who have assumed there is no such thing as objective morality may point to the very widespread moral disagreement between societies and individuals within a culture as proof.  A moral objectivist who has assumed the existence of morality may point to alleged trans-cultural similarities in moral beliefs as proof that universal moral obligations do exist.  A consistent rationalist will criticize them both, one for assuming that because people disagree on morality there is therefore no objective morality (a complete non sequitur assumption not based on logic), and the other for appealing to agreement as proof that a concept is true (the fallacy of appeal to popularity).  Yes, many people bring presuppositions with them when they examine evidence or facts, but as I briefly explained in another post [1] no one has to do this and it is not impossible to approach reality from an entirely rationalistic perspective.  If people operated by this rationalistic system they would exercise far more caution in making a claim and adopting a worldview and would therefore avoid many errors, both basic and subtle.

Rationalism does not make "fallible humans the judge", as presuppositional apologist Sye Ten Buggencate proposes, but instead it makes logic--an infallible thing, for it cannot be false or nonexistent--the judge.  What is "convincing," "compelling," or "persuading" to one person may not be to another.  In that regard, persuasion is subjective.  But reason is not.  I don't care how strongly someone may feel persuaded that scientism is true, it's an impossible contradiction.  I do not presuppose that scientism (the position that only science reveals truth) is false or reject it because I feel confidently persuaded it isn't.  I hate scientism because it is an inescapable contradiction, nothing but a self-refuting impossibility.  And I don't need to presuppose Christianity or any other organized worldview or religion to recognize this fact.

Reason contains no subjectivity.  Sound and valid syllogisms are not a matter of persuasion but of truth, regardless of whether or not one wishes to acknowledge the results.

Consider the following syllogism:

1. I am a human.
2. Humans are mortal.
3. Therefore I am mortal.

Is that a difficult use of logic to comprehend?  No.  It doesn't matter if I don't want to agree with the conclusion or if I don't feel persuaded by the statement "Therefore I am mortal," the conclusion is correct and undeniable if the premises are true.  So the Kalam cosmological argument for God, which is both sound and valid, is not a matter of subjective persuasion but strict logic.  It is either factually and true or not, but no one's persuasion or preferences alter anything about reality.  The only three legitimate options about the veracity of any claim someone can offer are "True," "False," or "There is not yet enough knowledge available to me to know if this is true or false."  No other options exist.

I also want to target several philosophical problems with Sye's presuppositionalism.  When interrogated as to why his strange and circular form of apologetics is sound, he provides evidence for presuppositional assumptions.  This immediately contradicts his own conclusion!  If evidence is required for presuppositionalism to be accepted and IF use of evidence contains hopeless subjectivity as he himself seems to believe, then Sye is attempting to hold two irreconcilable positions at once.

It also remains very unclear how presuppositionalism arrives at Christianity.  Even if someone had to presuppose God as necessary for many aspects of reality, this in no way establishes that the Christian deity exists or must be assumed.  One can prove using logic that a deity exists, however.  Rationalism will bring people to the conclusion that God is necessary--if one defines God as an uncaused cause.  Anyway, my point is that apologists like Sye Ten Buggencate and Joel McDurmon pair presuppositionalism and Christian theism, but even IF theism must be presupposed (and it absolutely does not), I still have no reason to presuppose Christianity as the particular form of theism I must assume.  Why not Islam?  Judaism?  Mormonism?  Some other religion I have never even heard of?  Couldn't those religions extend the same argument to justify their own alleged validity?  If Buggencate then resorts to evidence and proofs to leap from assumed theism to Christianity, he has again contradicted himself.

Presuppositionalism relies on vicious circular reasoning. 
Logic is self-evident, self-verifying, and axiomatic, but
beliefs about theology, history, and science are not.  This
obviously means information in the Bible is not self-evident
or true by necessity, unlike the laws of logic.

Assumptions, as I explained in my post entitled The Necessity of Reason [2], are dangerous, pointless, and contain no epistemological value.  One can literally assume ANYTHING and then pretend to conjure up proof confirming it.  As a rationalist, I don't want a seemingly plausible or personally satisfying interpretation, I want objective facts and demonstrations.

Just last night I viewed a video on YouTube [3] where Sye Ten Buggencate challenged atheist Penn Jillette about God's existence.  Interestingly, one of the points Buggencate emphasized to Jillette was that he receives "a lot of crap arguments" in his talks with theists, which elicited laughter, agreement, and approval from the atheists.  That much is undeniable.  Most arguments people use for theism or Christianity are indeed "crap arguments" and rational people will recognize their stupidity.

Ironically, presuppositionalism is one of the most circular and shit arguments of them all, and I wonder if Sye will ever realize this objective fact.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/objectivity.html

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-necessity-of-reason.html

[3].  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz8Fh2uR4Gc&app=desktop