A Presuppositional Apologist Becomes Catholic

An excellent presentation (mp3, podcast) of one man's journey into the Church by way of presuppositional apologetics a la Van Til, and Dr. Greg Bahnsen.
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/08/episode-14-from-presuppositional-pca-to-rome/






Presuppositional apologetics appears to be a good tool for debating atheists as demonstrated here in this now somewhat famous debate between Dr. Bahnsen and atheist Dr. Gordon Stein. The Great Debate.
http://veritasdomain.wordpress.com/2006/12/05/greg-bahnsen-vs-gordon-stein-the-great-debate/

Very interesting testimony. Thanks Jim. He mentioned Jerry Matatics. Is he a sedevacantist now?


Thanks for posting this very interesting! We should start a top 10 list of Jim's audios


On to listen to the second link.

Again thanks

Glad somebody likes this stuff. Yes, Jerry appears to be a sede these days. The Bahnsen/Stein debate is long, but, a good one. I'm going to pursue this presuppositional apologetics a bit, and buy at least one book by Bahnsen that was recommended to me by Marc Ayers (the testimonial) as a primer.

It's interesting that not everyone thinks much of presuppositional apologetics. Go back to the first link, and read the negative comments by one Michael Liccione. His PhD is in philosophy. I tried to get him to give me some specific examples of loopholes in Bahnsen's arguments, but he wouldn't really be too specific.

Oh heck...Here are his remarks:

"I believe that the presup approach is an overreach, whether Protestants or Catholics go in for it. One can and should show that theism is more reasonable than atheism, or that one version of theism is more reasonable than another; but one cannot show that all the major alternatives to theism are positively unreasonable, or that all the theistic alternatives to one’s version of theism are positively unreasonable. To pretend that one can show as much is to set oneself up for a shellacking by real philosophers."

Best,
Mike

also...

Jim:

"I’d rather not delve into the details of the Bahnsen/Stein debate. Unlike Marc, I’ve only heard it once, and not completely, because I lost patience with both of them. I’ll just say that the debate skated over issues about the relationship between language and the rest of reality that have been hotly debated in analytical philosophy for a century. I consider those philosophically more fundamental than anything Bahnsen and Stein were tackling, and there is no “knockdown” argument settling those issues. It’s a matter of which approach is more reasonable, given a wider set of rational aims humans generally have."

Best,
Mike

I listened to the whole debate and I thought the atheist did a pretty good job. I think Rasha used the presup. argument via Vin Lewis: "what ever leads to absurdity is absurd." Or something like that.
The Prod. didn't seem to be a good communicator. He kept repeating the same point but didn't seem to explain himself well. Sometimes you have to explain something in a dozen different ways before it clicks for somebody.
I would have put it something like this: "It's impossible to prove the law of non-contradiction. You have to assume it to prove it, and that's circular reasoning."

The use of the word "logic" wasn't really useful IMO. He didn't explain it well.
Some of his other points like we are logical because God is logical seemed weak too. I mean God is Truth and He doesn't use deductive reasoning or inductive reasoning, he just Knows, same for angels.

I find it ironic that Prods now have to learn philosophy which their founders Calvin and Luther would have frowned upon.

Scroll down to the William Lane Craig debates. He uses the "kalam argument". See what you think. I suggest his debate with Austin Dacey, if it is the same one I heard awhile back.

http://catholicaudio.blogspot.com/search/label/Debates?updated-max=2008-12-28T23%3A58%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=20

Roguejim wrote:Scroll down to the William Lane Craig debates. He uses the "kalam argument". See what you think. I suggest his debate with Austin Dacey, if it is the same one I heard awhile back.

http://catholicaudio.blogspot.com/search/label/Debates?updated-max=2008-12-28T23%3A58%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=20

I'll try and check it out tomorrow, thanks for the info