After listening to Darth Dawkins, Matt Yester, and many other advanced presuppositionalist apologists for over two months on discord, I am ready to make a response here. I will not make a response to them on discord for the reasons I will outline below.

I will also mention that during this time I did not debate anything I will present in this article with them in any way. I did not engage them. For it is my conclusion that ultimately, presuppositional apologetics is a false faith. Especially in the manner it is presented by people like Darth Dawkins and Matt Yester, it is a fundamentally unbiblical proposition and does not deserve a theological response (but one should be able to be given, so here we are).

• "A Study in the Epistemology of Presuppositional Apologetics" by David L. Turner“ (and many others in this vein)

If the above cannot be found do a search or try:

• https://www.galaxie.com/article/gtj02-1-03
• https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gtj/02-1_045.pdf

Please see the following video: https://youtu.be/pJHBx5-b8Lo

What is (a)?

• is not presup.
• an argument everyone agrees with, but
• by holding this, you hold to something else,
• which you don't want to hold, or which transcends perception in some way,

• is not an argument

tba

It is a major principle of PA that that there cannot be any verification of truth (facts) without a causal principle. This argument is incorrect and the implication of it when the PA uses it to point to God is incorrect.

The PA will sometimes point out that while circular reasoning is fallacious, a circular argument is not. This is because PA itself depends on a circular argument.

A circular argument is something like when you say that you like ice cream because it is delicious. This is true, but it is also circular; you can say that you find ice cream is delicious because you like it. Another example could be, if A depends on B, and we see this relationship upholds, and B is dependant on C, and we observe this relationship is also upheld, then we observe that C is dependent on A. This does not require some ultimately separate fact or truth to underpin A, B and/or C independently.

By biblical definition, all facts, truths and arguments are circular. The PA commits a form of blasphemy by insinuating that all physical facts, all true facts (or whatever language they are using to represent the notion of reality, authenticity or truth) necessarily derive or depend on God: To do so is to state that God has a direct hand in the physical universe. Of course, to the Christian this is not a heresy because they worship Jesus (a man). However, we are aware there is no biblical support for this position and in fact it is stated many times that God does not directly underpin the physical universe in this manner.

In fact we see therefore that PA is really a form of neoplatonism which purports an emanation of a monad. This is decidedly unbiblical and represents the depths to which PA has fallen.

The insinuation that a God who does not embody some sort of maximal personhood is an isogesic reading into the text of the qualities of Jesus onto God – this type of reading does not exist in the text. Even if the PA calls upon “let us create man in our image”, it the states He (singular) created them – who he was talking to was not other aspects of God. Also, stating that 'it is not good for man to be alone' is a conflation of 'created in the image of God' with the qualities of man, back-propagating all of those qualities onto God; this is not necessarily justified, not every quality of Man/Adam/Jesus necessarily has to be a quality of God. For example:

I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man—
the Holy One among you.
I will not come against their cities.Hosea 11:9 (ESV)

This is a strong defeater of PA because it shows the presupposition is inaccurate from a clear passage in the bible. Don't use Numbers 23:19 because they will say that 'God is not a man in the sense that he does not lie;' and will resume the platform that God must embody maximal personhood.

6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.Isaiah 55:6-7 (NIV)

The idea that repentance alone is not a salvific plan is in direct denial of God's word.

The PA will in fact claim that the non-Christian God is idolatrous because “there is no salvific plan” in which our God is maximally just and also maximally merciful. This is based on the misconception that a sacrifice is required; thus when it is pointed out that a sacrifice is not required the Christian does not understand that this plan could be valid; it is quite ironic that it is the Christian who has become caught up in the notion of sacrifices.

• Psa 51:17 (ESV)
  • The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
• Psalm 40:6 (NSV)
  • Sacrifices and offerings you did not desire, but you have given me an open ear.[a] Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.

20 The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

21 “But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 22 None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. 23 Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? 24 But when a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice and does the same abominations that the wicked person does, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, for them he shall die.

25 “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just? 26 When a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it; for the injustice that he has done he shall die. 27 Again, when a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life. 28 Because he considered and turned away from all the transgressions that he had committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 29 Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, are my ways not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?Ezekiel 18:20-29 (ESV)

Again, Ezekiel seems to answer directly to the Christian proposition:

10 “And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said: ‘Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?’ 11 Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?

12 “And you, son of man, say to your people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness[a] when he sins. 13 Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die. 14 Again, though I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, 15 if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery, and walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live; he shall not die. 16 None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live.

17 “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just,’ when it is their own way that is not just. 18 When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it. 19 And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this. 20 Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways.”Ezekiel 33:11-20 (ESV)

And, let it not be said there are not dozens of (even under-rated) such passages in the five books of Moses as well; here is a rather under-rated one from Numbers 15:

37 The Lord said to Moses, 38 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. 39 You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. 40 Then you will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated to your God. 41 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God.’”Numbers 15:37-41 (RSV)

This flies in the face of the biblical stories of God sending false prophets (ex. Deu 13, 18) and lying spirits (kings) and the notion of prescribed spiritual blindness (jeremiah, isaiah).

The PA will state that if one places trust in God, but not the Christian God – even to the extent of Judaism – that God will consider them an atheist. This is a form of blasphemy because it states that “God is not God” – only explicitly “the trinity” is “God”. This is a plain interpretation but it lacks politeness. See instead below “Believing in God makes you an Atheist”

This is the claim of the PA. The PA will propose that the idea of God in Judaism is an idolatrous proposition – because the hallmark of modern day Judaism is a denial of Jesus (and therefore to the PA, a denial of God). The PA will propose that this is an invention of modern day Judaism (see the opening of the Tohar HaYihud for a rebuttal of this concept) and that previously the Jewish people had a conception of God that there was diversity in his unity and not a pure unitarian” view of God. This is of course a misconception but the rebuttal is rather long and could be characterized as a “reading of the bible”, so should an answer be provided it should be provided in a separate article on the qualities or character of God as revealed in the Torah.

The PA will sometimes subscribe to certain calvinist doctrines such as non-agency or non-ability. They will state not only does the atheist have no grounds to make a rational statement, that they are in fact unable to make a rational statement in the first place. This means they have a non-capacity, not a capacity, to understand and discuss metaphysical issues. This would be considered a form of spiritual blindness therefore see veils and scales.

In their defense against atheism and nihilism, the presuppositionalist will state that you cannot create something out of nothing. Yet this is exactly what God did in the bible – the term for this is creation ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. Instead the PA will propose a theory dependant on some notion of emanation where God must continuously sustain the world; this is the emanation heresy which will next be discussed.

Central to the PA worldview is the heretical doctrine of emanation. They will use the Christian scriptures to underpin this belief, ex. Hebrews 1:1-2:8.

Critical to the theology in Hebrews is that Christ created and sustains the world. He is the Son “through whom [God] also created the worlds” (Heb. 1:2). Therefore, Hebrews is a book about Christ, the creator, at work in his workplace, the creation. This may be surprising to some who are used to thinking of the Father alone as creator. But Hebrews is con­sistent with the rest of the New Testament (e.g., John 1:3; Col. 1:15–17) in naming Christ as the Father’s agent in creation. Because Christ is fully God, “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb. 1:3), the writer of Hebrews can refer interchangeably to Christ or the Father as the Creator.https://www.theologyofwork.org/new-testament/hebrews/christ-created-sustains-the-world-hebrews-11-28

Thus we see the introduction of the heresy via assigning the qualities of Jesus to God; otherwise there would be an opportunity cost in taking this view (ex. Genesis 1:1, and see section on responses, below).

The PA will attempt to present the informal logical fallacy of proof by tautology. He will restate his argument to apply to different points and then claim the points support or reference the other.

For example, the presuppositionalist will ask, would you believe in god if you had evidence? The atheist will answer, yes. The PA will then ask, are you willing to believe in God right now? The A will answer no, for whatever reason. The PA will then engage the following logical fallacy: he will characterize the atheist as someone who denies the existence of God, and therefore an ultimate bias for all facts/truth. Then the PA will ask the atheist if he has any evidence for his position.

The dichotomy presented is, why does the atheist deny the existence of God, without any evidence to support his own position? That is, in light of the necessity for a rational basis which to rest all conclusions and truths on. The PA is characterizing the lack of evidence for the atheist position as a denial of a basis for facts. Thus, the atheist has no rational basis for making any assertion or statement.

This is, of course, false and what's more, illogical.

1. If the A. does not believe in God because he has no evidence, this is used to state the opponent should change his beliefs because he has no evidence for them. However, the proposition is that he change his beliefs specifically towards the PA's position. When it is pointed out that this does not constitute evidence which specifically supports the PA's position….

2. the PA tells the atheist he has no basis for his reasoning despite the fact he is appealing to his reasoning. The argument is thus obscured. It is no longer about whether or not there is any evidence for the existance of god, or for the PA's position (whatever that might entail), but over the very capacity of the A to understand or present logical statements. Yet the fact that the A can reason facts and has knowledge of facts was never the issue, only that he has no evidence for why. Thus the issue that the that the A. change his belief to the PA's belief has no rational basis, has been obscured, because the PA has not provided evidence that his assertion is correct, because he is falsely theoretically unable to do so.

3. The obvious problem with this is that the A. has in fact a conception of, and ability to state, facts. If the A. is doing this despite being in denial of the existence of God, then his ability to state and understand truth, facts, etc. has nothing to do with whether or not there is a God. In short, the CLAIM ITSELF that there is a God is de facto the CONCLUSION that the A. is only able to understand facts because there is a God!

Proof by assertion, sometimes informally referred to as proof by repeated assertion, is an informal fallacy in which a proposition is repeatedly restated regardless of contradiction.

it is at this point that you need to state that you do in fact have the capacity to reason and to understand and state facts, but that you simply do not understand why you have this rationale or you do not understand what in particular the ultimate grounding is. Not knowing what this grounding is, is not grounds for being incorrect – when one is self-evidently correct – and even the PA will admit that he does not believe this argument, only that he employs it to destroy the A's position (and that is his primary goal).

Not that we view a philosophical response as inherrently valid, but as a curiosity it turns out that a philosophic or logic based response will always fail against PA. This is because fundamentally the PA does not care about logic or philosophy. PA in many ways a response to and a derivative of the Kantian Categorigal Imperative and associated arguments; they thus have no theological response to anyone who hijacks the PA by claiming there is a God, but a “ “Different God” i.e. the Kotoamatsukami argument.

This is the very nature of the PA itself; it is defined as a fallacy; the presupposition fallacy. Once you engage a PA credibly in his arguments the fallacy has been overlooked and logic can no longer apply. Only a theologial response can shock them out of this, because they do view the word of God/will of God as an “ultimate authority”. However, you should be careful because this is more likely to cause a meltdown than to shock them out of their worldview.

The basic theological response is to state that our faculties of reason, sense, and thought are soverign in this world according to Genesis 1:26 “let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens[6f], and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moves upon the earth.” therefore Man has capacity to reason over the physical world; second, Genesis 1:28 “And God blessed them, and said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth; and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens[6f], and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” and 29 “And God said, “Behold, I have given you every green herb bearing seed upon the face of the earth, and every tree bearing fruit yielding seed; to you it shall be for food; …” and therefore God said “behold” and the man understood. Therefore men DO have a soverign rational basis for fact; if this basis extended directly from God then God would not need to issue commands or make statements since the rational basis for fact would include God's will.

This is confirmed clearly by example in Genesis 4. In 4:7 God states ““If you do well[a], will you not be accepted[b]? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; it greatly desires you, but you can master over it.”” This shows us that not only does man have capacity to reason and understand the physical world but also the metaphysical world. But, where is the example that this rationality does not extend or depend directly from God? v.9 states “And the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” And he said, “I don't know – am I[a; anokhi] my brother’s keeper?”” where Cain is saying, that isn't it in fact God who knows where Abel is, and is it not in fact God who is responsible for Abel's death, as God created Cain. God's response is to deny Cain's premise, v. 10 “And he said, “What have you done? …” and v.11 “Now, you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand; …” stating that it was Cain who was responsible for his rational thoughts and actions.

Second to this one may explore the issue from Genesis 2. v.15 states “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” which placed man in dominion over the Earth as an agent of God; but God also states in v.16 “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you will eat;””, v.17 ““but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you should not eat; for on the day[a] that you eat it, dying[b], you shall die[c].”” which means that the man has capacity to reason and understand sepatarate from the light of God.

The underpin for all of this is the statement that man was created in the image and likeness of God. The image and likeness of God allows man to demonstrate all of the general qualities of God which we ourselves observe us able to demonstrate. This is why the PA cannot deny we have these facilities, only he may question what the basis for it is. The PA's heresy, and inability to convince the A, now depends on the stated fallacy that all facts and understanding require God – they do not, in the sense the PA proposes. The human mind is free to comprehend and understand without having to accept the existence of God.

To destroy the heresies of primal cause and emanation, one may simply point out verses such as Genesis 1:1, Psalms 8:3, or most of Job 38 (ex. 38:4-7). These are past tense passages. However a perhaps stronger response is the notion of the sabbath itself:

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.Genesis 2:1-3 (ESV)

This and surrounding verses are explicit in countering the notions of a primal cause and the notion of emanation. Hebrews 1:1-2:8 can not stand up to the notion that God rested and did no work on the seventh day; thus he could not and does not act as a dependency for facts such that the PA may claim that all “facts” (of any dekaruchaa) derive from God.

For whatever purpose God set the world in motion such that he did not need to uphold it or interfere with it. This is actually philosophically convenient because it avoids the problem of God changing 'after' he had created the universe. This is actually an anti-atheist argument; where the atheist assumes God is bound by time ('after' he created time) by assuming he has a hand in our physical universe and thus his nature changed in the sense there is a pre-creation God and a post-creation God. However, Christians do not understand this as they accept such a heretical belief in the nature of Jesus; who he himself had to change (die on the cross) thus representing a pre-cross God and a post-cross God, pre and post theologies and so forth (thus leading to unremovable heresies such as replacement theology).

Odious, but not necessarily critical problems.

The PA demonstrates and in fact states that they do not care to give any credence to their debate partner's beliefs. They are generally extremely rude to people and this is not tolerated by religious or highly moral people. As a result the PA tends to attract more atheists and over time a dichotomy has arisen where PA tends to specialize in anti-atheist arguments. However, this is not the biblical approach, neither in the method nor the substance of the argument.

For example — the PA will attempt to create a double standard by stating outright they are only interested in discrediting their opponent's beliefs, and they will then not tolerate any discussion of their own beliefs. One of the major problems with this is of course that when you knock the foundation out from under someone and do not offer them something else to replace it, you leave them in a more precarious state than before; further you have now taken responsibility for their (erronous) state – not something you generally want to be responsible for when you see someone falling into various heresies.

Related to the above, but which will be stated separately, is the weak theological foundation of PA. Because their approach is to tear down an opponent's worldview, this does not prevent any heresy from introducing itself into their own worldview; see False Faith.

When asked to verify their own position, they will typically respond that they know it is true because it has been revealed to them. This can be answered by the patriarchal faith argument, but I have not yet seen this asked to a PA. It is the question how we can have the same faith as the patriarchs who walked with God, saw angels, and had visions, prophecies, and revelations – it is essentially the Trust Problem – the PA will claim revelation, but there is no independant source for us to verify his claims, and then they are seen as ultimately unfounded (which is an extreme irony in the face of the audacity in which the PA assumes his own assumptions).

The PA will state outright they do not even believe what they are saying. They are not talking about what is, they simply present what usually amounts to a strawman (but are occasionally accurate) of the opponent's beliefs and then attempt to mock it or discredit it. This is a form of lying because they mislead people into believing they are talking about a subject seriously, and when they realise they have been baited and switched, their opponents feel cheated or lied to.