Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Theonomy Does Not Require Presuppositionalism

Christian presuppositional apologists are some of the most intellectually inept people you can ever meet when it comes to their epistemology.  In their severe irrationality, they claim that first principles (logic, axioms) can only be reliable if God exists, that no one can believe that any knowledge is possible without first presupposing that God exists, and that anyone who makes a claim about reality that happens to align with Christian teachings is borrowing, aware or unaware, from the Christian worldview--or even assuming that is is true.  Presuppositionalists are great at spouting fallacious nonsense.

Sometimes they have a tendency to endorse certain specific theological ideas, whether true or false.  Just like presuppositionalists may be very attracted to Calvinism and postmillennialism, they may very strongly support Christian theonomy and reconstructionism.  This association of theonomy and presuppositionalism is not one of bilateral logical necessity, though.  Whether or not theonomy is true is an issue totally separate from whether or not presuppositionalism is true.  Sure, it follows from Christian presuppositionalism that some form of Christian theonomy is true, but it does not follow from Christian theonomy that presuppositionalism is true.

I am a theonomist because I am a rationalist, not because I presupposed or need to presuppose that Christianity is true--reason is how I know that conscience and society are totally unreliable sources of moral knowledge, not some private intuition that Jesus exists, some presupposition that the Bible is true, or because it is self-evident that God has to reveal moral truths to humans.  It is not self-evident; very few things are.  Since theonomy, like other Biblical doctrines, must be established using other evidence, it is not evident in itself.

Theonomy is true even if Christianity as a whole is not, much less the absurd philosophical position of Christian presuppositionalism.  Even if the parts of the Bible that do not affirm things that are inescapably true (that truth exists, an uncaused cause exists, matter exists, etc.) were false, it would still be still true that morality only exists in a theistic universe and that if I am not God then I do not know moral truths on my own, only my subjective perceptions and moral preferences.  Thus, it would still be true that if I am not God, all moral knowledge must be revealed to me by God and is inaccessible using my conscience.  All moralists and Christians have an irrational moral epistemology if they are not theonomists.  

Presuppositionalism, though, is self-damning, since it by necessity denies the fact that logic exists by intrinsic necessity in itself, whether or not a deity exists.  And anything that denies the existence or innate veracity of logic is automatically self-defeating, since any denial of logic can only be true if logic is true, and since logic cannot be false.  Theism in general, and narrower versions of it like Christianity, is totally unrelated to the necessary existence and reliability of logic.  Presuppositionalists admit from the start that they are merely presupposing a conclusion (thereby committing a host of fallacies), and they are entirely correct--they just assume something and then become irritated when people either assume something contrary or use reason instead of making assumptions to begin with!

Presuppositionalism is nothing--nothing at all--but an enormous bundle of fallacies and epistemological errors passed off as Biblically and logically sound.  Presuppositionalism is neither taught by the Bible nor supported by logic.  It is an extra-Biblical epistemological and apologetics framework that is plagued by numerous falsities.  It is useless, arbitrary, and thoroughly untrue.  Theonomy, on the other hand, is revealed by both logic and Scripture.  In its absence, moral skepticism and subjectivity of conscience are the best humans can hope for.

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