Responding to Mr. Atheist
Read this article to find out what an atheist objected to on my youtube channel....and how I responded.
As you know, I recently began running a Youtube channel called Gospelogical. On that channel, I posted a video about Presuppositional Apologetics.
The video was focused on how Atheists cannot account for anything if they are consistent with their worldview. I posted it yesterday, and today I got a negative comment from a critic, stating that I was completely wrong in what I said, and how Atheism actually can account for these immaterial concepts.
I thought this would be an excellent example of how Atheists try to account for these immaterial concepts, and since I post a lot about Presuppositional Apologetics on here, I decided to write this one down, so you can see Presup in action.
I was excited to respond to the first atheist I had ever encountered. Here is his objection and my response; let me know what you think in the comment section down below!
Atheist Comment:
“This is actually not what happens. You're perpetuating a strawman based on your worldview, a worldview that is not necessarily applicable without God.
When Nietzsche lived it was really hard to live without borrowing from some religious worldview - because there was no fully explored naturalistic alternative.
Nietzsche realized that as an atheist you could only keep theistic concepts if you replaced the foundation. If you couldn't replace the foundation you had to reject the concept. At least to be consistent in your worldview.
It's how we can still use concepts like "up" or "here" even after moving from geocentricism to heliocentrism. We fundamentally reframed those concepts.
But today, philosophers like Hume, Wittgenstein, Popper, Quine, and Oppy, among many others, have shown that atheists can have a fully coherent worldview without God.
- Most replace theistic realism with modest realism or anti-realism. That removes most problems based on transcendental concepts like morality, logic, absolute empirical truths, and so on
- Most replace the dualistic nature of concepts with gradients, and gave up on many polar opposites. Maybe even some form of deconstructionism.
- Most keep rationalism and empiricism is separate epistemic domains and when they move between domains they need to provide epistemic justification for that move.
- Most replace foundationalism with epistemic pragmatism, coherentism, instrumentalism, or something like that.
Atheism "borrows" some words and terminology, not their Christian foundation. And it causes equivocation issues that make theists and atheists talk past each other.”
End comment.
Evaluation:
Okay there was a whole lot of stuff in there. Let me break this down into a summary. He did not elaborate, so I cannot be completely sure, but I believe I know what his main point was. He was objecting and saying that even though its true that Atheism cannot account for it, it can replace the foundation by substituting Epistemical Pragmatics, which basically states that standards are found by evaluting whether or not something works(i.e., helps to survive), and grounding all your evalutions in that.
At first glance, this seems like a fine argument. But it’s actually fundamentally flawed…..
My Response:
“Thank you for your feedback. I will try to address the main points in your comment, however, I may have misunderstood you, so I apologize if my response does not accurately respond to your specific objection. Please let me know if I misrepresent or misunderstand your position.
Your Comment(Atheist):
“This is actually not what happens. You're perpetuating a strawman based on your worldview, a worldview that is not necessarily applicable without God."
Response(Me):
You reference anti-realism later in the comment, saying it is a part of how atheists solve the problem of transcendental concepts such as morality, logic, and so on. But anti-realism states that there is no truth, that it depends upon subjective human minds, and is cultural and personal. And if truth is subjective, personal, and does not exist independently of humans, how come you are telling me what is right and wrong? After all, it is simply your preference, and it is illogical to state that your preference is right and my preference is wrong. You say that my content is not correct. But after all, that is just your preference, so why should you say that my preference is objectively wrong, and your preference is objectively right? And in a random purposeless universe with no laws of logic independent of humans, why should I not commit the strawman fallacy? In an atheistic worldview, why should we trust this immaterial law that says: “Thou shalt not commit a strawman fallacy”?
Your Comment(Atheist):
"When Nietzsche lived it was really hard to live without borrowing from some religious worldview - because there was no fully explored naturalistic alternative.
Nietzsche realized that as an atheist you could only keep theistic concepts if you replaced the foundation. If you couldn't replace the foundation you had to reject the concept. At least to be consistent in your worldview."
Response(Me):
This is correct. You cannot keep the concept if you do not replace the foundation. And this is exactly what atheists try to do. But they have not replaced the foundation yet! And until they manage to replace the foundation, they cannot use the concept. Therefore, I am pointing out that since the atheist position has not replaced the foundation, they cannot use immaterial concepts such as logic, reason, and morality. But as I will address further down, why is it important that you be consistent? What is this immaterial law that says you have to be consistent? This is yet another abstract concept that Atheism is assuming without being able to account for it.
Your Comment(Atheist):
"It's how we can still use concepts like "up" or "here" even after moving from geocentricism to heliocentrism. We fundamentally reframed those concepts."
Response(Me):
True. However, atheists have done no such thing with logic, reason, morality, and other such immaterial concepts. They have no foundational standard for morality, no transcendental objective laws of logic, no standard of reason by which we judge each other's arguments.
Your Comment(Atheist):
"But today, philosophers like Hume, Wittgenstein, Popper, Quine, and Oppy, among many others, have shown that atheists can have a fully coherent worldview without God."
Response(Me):
You are presupposing another immaterial concept the atheist position cannot account for. You say that Atheists can have a fully coherent worldview without God - why is coherency required for a worldview? ] Now you say this: “Of course coherency is required for a worldview, your thoughts are supposed to be rational and reasonable”. But this statement arguing for something you cannot presuppose also has a presupposition the atheist worldview cannot account for. Why should you be rational and reasonable? What is this immaterial, transcendent, objective law that says you must maintain rationality and reasonability in your arguments? Furthermore, what is rationality and reasonability? What are these two standards by which you judge thought? And finally, if there were laws that stated it, why should you obey them??
Your Comment(Atheist):
"- Most replace theistic realism with modest realism or anti-realism. That removes most problems based on transcendental concepts like morality, logic, absolute empirical truths, and so on."
Response(Me):
Rather, it raises an even bigger problem. If you accept anti-realism then truth, reason, and morality are subjective. This means that you cannot judge Hitler and say what he did was wrong. This means that in a debate, I can ignore the law of contradiction and say that the universe can be both 4.6b and 6-10K years old, and that statement is correct, because there is no transcendent law that states that two contradictory claims cannot both be true. The solution that atheism presents is not a solution at all - it means that we have no law by which to judge morality, our thought process, or anything else for that matter.
Your Comment(Atheist):
"- Most replace the dualistic nature of concepts with gradients, and give up on many polar opposites. Maybe even some form of deconstructionism.
- Most keep rationalism and empiricism as separate epistemic domains and when they move between domains they need to provide epistemic justification for that move.
- Most replace foundationalism with epistemic pragmatism, coherentism, instrumentalism, or something like that."
Response(Me):
So in other words, they admit they cannot ground these immaterial concepts, and have to replace them with other ideas that still do not provide a foundation.
Your Comment(Atheist):
Atheism "borrows" some words and terminology, not their Christian foundation. And it causes equivocation issues that make theists and atheists talk past each other”
Response(Me):
On the contrary, Christians and Atheists both use the same foundation. The difference is that the Christian acknowledges that the foundation is God. The Atheist does no such thing, and in refusing to let a divine foot in the door, abandons the supreme foundation of everything.
To summarize, your objection seems to be saying that it is true that Atheism cannot account for these immaterial concepts, and so institutes epistemic pragmatism, stating that we judge our actions by practicality - whatever works. But as I emphasized in my video(10:00), just because something works, whether for survival or anything else, does not mean you can trust it. Just because something helps you to survive does not mean you can depend upon it as your supreme standard. So epistemic pragmatism actually does not provide a solution to these immaterial concepts. It merely begs the question, saying that we can trust it because it works, but not answering the objection that just because it works does not mean you can trust it.
Thanks.
Ok that one was a doozy. The atheist had a lot of objections for me to respond to. You see that I pointed out that he is using immaterial concepts he cannot account for, such as consistency, being rational, etc. You see that I was able to use Presup to undermine his position and show that he cannot account for anything, instead of spouting random bits of scientific evidence to prove the earth is young.
Presup enabled me to respond effectively and show he is being inconsistent with his worldview - this is why I consider Presup the Ultimate Argument for Christianity.
I did say something however that I want to explain. I referenced a timestamp to my video in which I explained how just because something works does not mean it is trustworthy. However, assuming you haven’t watched that video, I want to explain what I said in the video.
Here it is:
“Take this example. A caveman evolves the belief that every single time he hears a crackle or a rustle in the woods, it is a saber toothed tiger trying to eat him. Therefore, every time he hears a crackle or a rustle, he runs for his life.
This could help him to survive. Say a predator is trying to get him, and he hears it rustling, so he runs for his life and is saved. That mutation rescued him from being a tiger’s breakfast. Now imagine all the cavemen develop this mutation. Now they all run for their lives whenever they hear a rustle, because they believe it is a saber toothed tiger.
But you see, this is a false belief! when the cave man hears a crackle in the woods, it is not always going to be a saber toothed tiger. And yet he runs anyway, because his mutation is false. So this is a mutation that helps him to survive, but is not valid and trustworthy”.
You see, this example proves that epistemic pragmatism does not actually provide a solution. It proves that just because something works, does not mean it can be trusted.
Conclusion
I was very grateful for this objection to my video because just yesterday I thought that I should try to find an atheist argument to display on RTR, and show where it presupposes concepts it can’t account for. Turns out I didn’t even have to look😁.
Thanks for reading, please subscribe, like, and comment, and yes I did just post 2 articles in one day. Overachiever.
Thank you, and this was very funny: And if truth is subjective, personal, and does not exist independently of humans, how come you are telling me what is right and wrong?