Presuppositionalism Primer, pt. 5

Last posting I wrote of how the apologist cuts to the chase when answering an unbeliever by taking a transcendental approach in his argumentation. We question whether the universe the non-Christian believes he inhabits is one in which the reasoning he is trying to use is possible. We're asking if the conditions which are neccesary for us to have the conversation exist if the world is what he claims it to be.

I'd like to give some examples of those conditions. This is not a checklist to simply spew out in all our conversations, but it's some common issues that come up in the typical apologetic conversation. Most of the sorts of debates we find ourselves in in our society take the same relative shape, centering on science. logic, etc.

The first conditions are universality and predictability of the physical realm. It's taken for granted that the Universe is a uni-verse--physical laws operate the same everywhere. It's also assumed that they will continue to do so. The rules won't change overnight. Things are predictable and so we may connect what happens this instant to what will happen in the next. This allows us to reason from one instance to another--you see something fall to the ground and you can reasonably expect other things to fall to the ground all the time if they're dropped too. And this is true in every place where the gravity is the same.

The next set of conditions are the existence, universality and predictability of immaterial abstractions. By this we mean things like the laws of logic, math, physics, etc., things which have no material substance yet are real, universally applicable, and constant. They aren't mere conventions, but are true whether or not one denies them. If I choose not to believe the law of noncontradiction, I still can't be both Johnny and Not-Johnny at the same time. These factors allow us to categorize the things we observe.

The next assumption is that both individuality and universality have meaning. Singular things are really singular and corporate groups are really corporate. In philosophy this is called the "one" and the "many." Both concepts are assumed to have real meaning, which means that each must be ultimate, equally. You can't say that at bottom "all is One," because then many-ness isn't really true. And vice-versa. This allows us to speak of individual facts and broad categories.

Those are just a few things, but they're big things. Without these conditions, one couldn't connect any of the facts of one's experience together in a coherent way. Rational thought would be impossible.

So then, after asking, "What has to be true for the unbeliever's argument to fly?" the next step is to see if his point of view can account for those conditions. Next post we'll look at that.