A presuppositional impasse

In the Skepticule Extra Facebook group, Skepticule co-host Paul Baird posted a link to an episode of the Fundamentally Flawed podcast in which Alex Botten and Jim Gardner took on Eric Hovind and Sye Ten Bruggencate. It was a while before I got around to listening to it (it's over an hour and a half long), but last night I did listen, and while doing so I posted my thoughts and reactions as comments on Paul B's link. Skepticule Extra is a closed Facebook group, so for the benefit(!) of non-members I've pasted my comments below (others' comments omitted, as I didn't see them until I'd finished listening):

Paul Jenkins Listening to this at the moment. Not kicked anything yet.

23 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Just got to Sye's complaint about Alex's blog comments. Convenient he exhibits his paranoia at the point his schtick is evidently failing to make any progress.

23 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Is Sye attempting to provoke Alex into hanging up on him?

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Here's my take on a couple of questions: 1. Is it possible for an omnipotent God (if he exists) to reveal something to me such that I can be certain of it? Answer: no, because "possibility" necessarily excludes "certainty" — that is, the question is incoherent. 2. Is it possible that we don't know anything at all? Answer: yes, apart from the knowledge that "thinking" is going on somewhere. But we function in the world nevertheless — amazing, isn't it?

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins ‎3. Is appealing to your senses and reason to justify your senses and reason a viciously circular argument? Answer: no. It's circular but it's not vicious. And appealing to scripture to justify scripture is also circular. 4. Can the laws of logic change? Answer: this question is incoherent because it misunderstands the nature of logic. Logic isn't something over and above the physical universe, it is a characteristic of existence. Without logic there is no existence. Logic is inextricably entwined with existence and causality, and our understanding of it may change with our understanding of reality. Eric's point about the ontology of logic is invalid because his conception of the nature of logic is false.

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Coming to the end now. And I think Eric is about to ask Alex and Jim to repent (if previous experience is anything to go by).

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins It was Sye who asked this time, coupled with a threat of Hell.

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Yay! subjective morality!

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins The end.

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins Now I'm going to hold my head under the cold tap.

22 hours ago ·

Paul Jenkins BTW, Jim's description of Sye's refusal to debate scripture with a non-believer as a "cop-out" is spot on. Sye is effectively refusing to debate scripture with anyone who disagrees with him. Maybe that's why he's so fond of the presuppositional approach — anyone who falls for the binary nature of the TAG is easy prey, while those who don't will necessarily stall at the first question because they realise it's a false dichotomy.

22 hours ago ·

Presuppositional apologetics — why bother?

Some of my readers may have endured what has become known as The Fourth Debate, in which the three Pauls of the Skepticule Extra podcast were subjected to the presuppositional apologetic argument of Eric Hovind and Sye Ten Bruggencate. We released it, unedited, as an episode of the Skepticule Record, which is that part of Skepticule intended to archive live events.

I believe I can safely assert that the three Pauls are in agreement that The Fourth Debate was the final word on Presuppositional Apologetics as far as they, personally, are concerned. PA has been shown, increasingly and repetitively, not to work. It doesn't convince atheists, and it doesn't convince those theists (the majority) who claim to have evidence for the existence of God. It appears that PA is only considered valid by those who already hold to it. As an apologetic method, therefore, it's a dismal failure.

For some people, however, this isn't enough. Chris Bolt of the Choosing Hats blog and podcast (though "podcast" is used loosely here, as I can't find an RSS feed that encloses the media files, and have had to download them manually)* has been commenting on the aforementioned episode of the Skepticule Record in obsessive and tedious detail. There are currently four editions of "Praxis Presup" covering The Fourth Debate — numbers 12, 13, 14 and 15. Two-and-a-half hours of commentary (including clips of the "debate" itself) is a lot, and might perhaps be worth it for a "debate" that ran for an hour and nine minutes, but Chris Bolt's commentary in these four editions of Praxis Presup covers only the first half-hour of our podcast. Apparently there's more commentary to come, but based on what's been released so far, I've no incentive to listen further. (An added disincentive is the appalling sound quality of Praxis Presup. I hope Chris Bolt's listeners don't think the podcast we released is of comparable sound quality to the clips he played.)

All of which leaves me with a nagging question: for whom is Praxis Presup intended? Certainly not atheists, who — if they bother to listen — will only be confirmed in their conviction that PA is nonsense. Evidential theists won't be convinced, as PA claims their approach is invalid. The only people who will agree with Chris Bolt's analysis will be presuppositionalists themselves — and why do they need this, if they are already convinced by PA?

It's a mystery.

---

*It's been brought to my attention (thanks Fergus!) that there is indeed a working podcast feed for Praxis Presup: http://www.choosinghats.com/category/podcasts/feed/

Presuppositional apoplectics

If you read Paul Baird's blog, Patient and Persistent, you'll know that our recording of Skepticule Extra 009 last night didn't go as planned. About half way through Paul B took a Skype call from Eric Hovind (while letting him know we were recording), and a little further on in the conversation we were joined by Sye Ten Bruggencate. What followed was a demonstration of Presuppositional Apologetics in action, and the main thing I took away from it — regardless of the validity or invalidity of its arguments — is that it clearly doesn't work as an apologetic method. The more I hear of it the less convincing it sounds. In particular Sye's schtick (amply evident in the recorded conversation) doesn't change. Because PA is essentially circular it can't expand and offer anything else, and when you've heard the same unconvincing argument several times it inevitably becomes less convincing each subsequent time you encounter it.

As far as I'm aware, Christianity isn't overflowing with converts who became believers as a result of hearing this argument, and when the subject was discussed in the Premier Community the most vocal opponents of PA were not atheists but other Christians.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results."

(attr: Albert Einstein)

Eric and Sye have agreed to the unedited recording being aired on Skepticule Extra, so listen out for a special episode in the next few days.

Presuppositional Apologetics: an argument that's not an argument

At the beginning of this year I posted about presuppositional apologetics (PA). I first encountered this particular argument for the existence of God after a search for information about the transcendental proof.

Justin Brierley's Unbelievable? radio programme dealt with presuppositional apologetics in July 2010 with a debate/discussion between presuppositionalist Sye Ten Bruggencate and atheist Paul Baird — a programme that provoked a forum discussion exceeding 1000 posts and confirmed that as an apologetic method PA is a dismal failure.

Today's Unbelievable? — billed as round two — again featured Sye and Paul, but on this occasion was more about PA rather than just Sye actually doing it (although inevitably it included some of that as well).

Streaming audio of the show is available here:
http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={C2CD1A87-7A50-498E-B5F5-773F4EE37E46}

Or you can download the mp3 here:
http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/6edf007c-73a9-47c9-bbbd-c9e9a97a4113.mp3

Listening to the show, and to Sye doing his schtick, I felt some sympathy for Justin as he sided with Paul in trying to persuade Sye to explain how he gets from the generic God (resulting from Sye's transcendental argument) to the God of Christianity.

Of course Sye didn't explain any such thing, claiming that the Christian God is not a culmination but a necessary presupposition to his argument. The discussion clearly demonstrated why presuppositional apologetics doesn't work. PA is never going to persuade anyone that it's correct, because it simply presupposes that it's correct. Anyone who accepts Sye's argument as valid isn't being persuaded of the truth of Christianity, they are simply accepting it a priori as true. If the argument requires at its very beginning the existence of the specifically Christian God, it's hardly surprising that it expends no effort in trying to prove something it takes as a given.

Since his first encounter with Sye, Paul has spent considerable time and effort researching PA, and you can hear his own account of the "rematch" on the first episode of Skepticule Extra, available here:

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/03/skepextra-001-20110313.html

The only people who find PA convincing are those who already think it's a good argument. That's why PA is doomed.

Presuppositional gymnastics

The following is a reaction to an email exchange between Paul Baird and Sye Ten Bruggencate, posted on the Unbelievable? discussion group prior to today's Unbelievable? programme in which they took part. I've now listened to the show and have only this to add: I came across Sye's website 18 months ago — I thought the argument presented was bogus then, and I think it's bogus now.

The presuppositional argument seems to be predicated at its root on one basic premise — that absolute laws of logic exist. This does indeed sound as if it's true. Without logic we can't know anything is true. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" would not stand up without logic. But to say that the laws of logic are "absolute" may be misunderstanding the nature of reasoning. To get an inkling of why this might be, consider how the universe would look if there were no such thing as logic. If we couldn't rely on logic to enable us to understand the world, what would the world look like to us? Would it look like anything at all? Isn't even our very existence as conscious entities completely impossible without the existence of logic? In this sense, the existence of logic may in fact be "properly basic" — and consequently we have no need to search for its origin (because, being properly basic, it doesn't have one).

Unfortunately for those unbelievers who engage in discussion with apologists of the presuppositional variety (as well as with those who simply borrow from presuppositional apologetics), any reasoned argument — it can be about anything at all — tends to be met with the rejoinder that the unbeliever surely has no way of knowing how anything is true, because he or she has no absolute logical standard on which to base their "reasoned" arguments. This is extremely tiresome, as it's a debate-stopper. You can't argue with someone who denies that you have any basis for using reasoned argument. Of course, while the unbeliever has no basis for logic, this doesn't however apply to the the apologist, who claims that absolute laws of logic come from God. This claim, like many put forward by apologists, isn't backed up by evidence — it is simply asserted.

Christian apologists in particular may claim that their absolute moral or logical authority is revealed in the Bible, but to do this they have to use the circular argument that the Bible is true because it says it is true (in the Bible). Challenge an apologist on this and they will reply that it's perfectly acceptable to use the Bible as its own authority, because the unbeliever is using logic to verify that logic and reason work, which, the apologists claim, is also circular.

Using logic and reason to verify the truth of logic and reason is not circular, however, if logic and reason are properly basic.

Some apologists of the presuppositional persuasion do seem prone to moralizing from on-high. Maybe this has something to do with their preoccupation with absolutes. In many discussions you are quite likely to see such apologists passing high-handed remarks about the unbeliever's eternal soul, about how the apologist will nonetheless offer up crocodile prayers in the apparently earnest wish that the unbeliever finds God and relents of his or her wicked ways. And if that fails to impress (as it surely does), there will likely be more crocodile regrets that the unbeliever is destined for Hell. All this extraneous nonsense is irrelevant to the debate, and acts as an annoying and alienating smokescreen.

Tiresome is what I called it above, and if I see it in an online discussion or debate it will discourage me from contributing, because I know that the presuppositional mindset is pretty much impregnable — as it is meant to be. Presuppositional apologetics is a field that appears explicitly designed to defend faith from rationality by attempting to undermine the basis for rationality itself.

Here's a (fictitious but typical) example of an effort to undermine rational argument:

Apologist: "Do absolute morals exist?"

Unbeliever: "No."

Apologist: "Are you absolutely sure of that, or is it merely your opinion?"

Disregarding the obvious false dichotomy of that last question, you can see where this is going. If the unbeliever replies that he or she is not absolutely sure that absolute morality doesn't exist, the apologist can continue to claim that it does. If however the unbeliever claims to be absolutely sure that absolute morality does not exist, the apologist will go on to enquire where the unbeliever's absolute knowledge comes from. Swap out morality for logic (or science, or truth), rinse and repeat, and the argument will stall before ever advancing to the field of human instinct, shared values, social cohesion, evolution, kin selection or any other discipline that seeks to explore the modern basis of ethical behaviour.

But the laws of logic are not absolute — in the sense of being separate from the universe. It seems likely to me that "logic" is an emergent property of matter and energy. If the universe didn't exist, neither would the "laws" of logic. That the universe is susceptible to rational analysis doesn't have to be proved; logic isn't contingent, it isn't based on anything.

Logic is properly basic. It just is.