Over at Evangelical Realism I’m taking a break from my usual book reviews to indulge in a post-mortem of Stephen Feinstein’s debate with fellow FtB-er Russell Glasser. It’s my chance to dig in and play with some of the presuppositional apologetics stuff that I’ve heard floating around, and a bit of fun besides. (With apologies to Russell for freeloading off his great series.)
Alethian Worldview
If it's not reality, it's not the truth
You list seven things that Pastor Feinstein must define and show. He only has to presuppose they are true, thus the name of the philosophy. It’s like playing chess with a pigeon.
I disagree. If you play chess with a pigeon, at least you get a cool story out of it.
I’ve often thought that presuppositionalism sounds like ordinary liberal postmodernism dressed up for church. What makes Pastor Feinstein’s presentation a bit more fun is that he seems to believe that it is possible to test one’s presuppositions against the evidence in order to determine whose presuppositions are right and whose are wrong. He can’t retreat into full-blown postmodern agnosticism without admitting that his core argument is wrong and that atheistic worldviews are just as valid as his own.
Deacon Duncan,
I read these deconstructions with great interest in early 2013. It kept my daily commute by train intellectually stimulating. I suspect I learned about this series of posts because Russel posted about them somewhere. After the series ended I followed your blog here.
I am about to go through them again, skimming mostly. This is to prepare for a debate I have agreed to with a blogger I came across recently. Not really a presup! Just a William Lane Craig fan. But the debate is about the special pleading involved in saying that God is the only non-contingent thing. This series totally reshaped my thinking on the nature of reality. I really appreciate the work you put into these. And there are key bits I want to reread and make sure I got right.
Thank you.
Thanks, I’m glad they were useful. You might also be interested in a series I did at my old blog on Craig’s book On Guard. It’s here.