Against All Opposition - Defending The Christian Worldview (Greg L. Bahnsen)

AGAINST ALL
OPPOSITION
AGAINST ALL
OPPOSITION
DEFENDING THE
C H R I S T I A N WO R L D V I E W
GREG L. BAHNSEN
The Ame ri c a n Vi si o n
Powder Springs, Georgia
Against All Opposition: Defending the Christian Worldview
Copyright © 2020 by The American Vision, Inc.
Published by The American Vision, Inc.

PO Box 220
Powder Springs, GA 30127
www.AmericanVision.org
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be
invented, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer
who quotes brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in
a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast as long as publishing information
is included. American Vision is a registered trademark in the United States of
America.
Cover design and typesetting: Kyle Shepherd

Editing: Gary DeMar and John Barach
Printed in the United States of America
Scripture quotations are from the American Standard Version and the New
American Standard Bible.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-915815-05-0
Published in the United States of America

This publication is made to the Glory of God and in loving
memory of (Rev.) Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen with the assistance of a
grant from the Rev. Dr. Atwood L. Rice III and family.
CONTENTS
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
1 Faith or Reason?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
2 It’s Impossible to Think Without Presuppositions . . . 19
3 Foundational Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4 Reasoning as a Christian Should Reason . . . . . . . 63
5 Unbelievers Are Not Neutral and
Christians Shouldn’t Be. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
6 What is Philosophy?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7 Challenges of Competing Worldviews. . . . . . . . 125
8 A Critique of Atheism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
9 The Unbeliever is a Believer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
10 A Quick Course in Comparative Religion. . . . . . 183
11 Biblical Counterfeit Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
vii
PREFACE
By Gary DeMar
At the center of every world view is what might be called the

“touchstone proposition” of that world view, a proposition that
is held to be the fundamental truth about reality and serves as
a criterion to determine which other propositions may or may
not count as candidates for belief.1
In the 1950s, the John C. Winston Company, later to become

part of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, published “Adventures in
Science Fiction,” a multi-volume series of juvenile hardcover
novels of thirty-six books.
Some of the world’s greatest science fiction writers got their
start with the series: Arthur C. Clarke, best known for 2001:
A Space Odyssey, Ben Bova, Lester Del Rey, Donald Wollheim,
and Poul Anderson. The books carried an original retail price
of $2.00. Today, depending on condition and the author, a first
edition with an unclipped dust jacket can cost as much as $500.
In addition to the wonderful stories, the books are worth
collecting for the cover art. While the books are dated in terms
1. William H. Halverson, A Concise Introduction to Philosophy, 4th ed. (New

York: Random House, 1981), 414.
ix
x AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION
of technology (the use of computers is minimal and email was

non-existent), the stories reflect the moral worldview of post-
World War II America. In addition, a teenager could find a
great deal of worldview wisdom sprinkled throughout the 200+
pages of these fascinating science fiction novels since a funda-
mental Christian worldview was still operative.
Here’s an example from Paul Dallas’ The Lost Planet, a story
about how two teenagers avert a war between their home plan-
ets. The scene takes place just before the teenager from Earth
boards a spaceship and travels to the distant planet of Poseida:
As he spoke, the general seemed to become preoccupied with

thoughts of the military situation, and he absently deployed
salt and pepper shakers with knives and forks on the table, set-
ting up in front of him an imaginary military problem in the
field. “It is a basic truism,” he continued, “that wherever possi-
ble the best defense is a good offense. Now if we are attacked,”
and he brought a piece of silverware in toward the plate that
was obviously representing Planet Earth, “not only do we de-
fend the point under immediate attack but,” and here several
pieces were quickly moved from the plate Earth to the butter
dish from which the attack had originated, “we immediately
counterattack at the source of the aggression. After all, if you
cut off the head, you have no need to fear the arms.”2
Dallas has the General making a crucial point about fighting

and winning against an enemy combatant that applies to ideolog-
ical and theological debates. Defending the Christian worldview
against unbelieving thought takes an understanding that every
2. Paul Dallas, The Lost Planet (Philadelphia, PA: The John C. Winston
Company, 1956), 3.
Preface xi
worldview has a centralized guiding principle that serves as its

foundational operational assumption about the nature of reality.
By going after the head, as Jael did to Sisera (Judges 4–5),
as an unnamed woman did to Abimelech (Judges 9:52–55), as
David did to Goliath (1 Sam. 17), as Jesus did to Satan at the
cross at Golgotha, “place of the skull” (John 19:17), and what
Jesus did for us in crushing Satan under our feet (Rom. 16:20;
cf. Gen. 3:15), the structure of opposing worldviews crumbles
because the foundation cannot withstand examination. Chris-
tians tend to attack symptoms, the rotten fruit of unbelieving
thought, rather than expose the root that gives life to the tree.
The Bible tells us, “The ax is already laid at the root of the trees”
with the result that “every tree . . . that does not bear good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matt. 3:10; 7:19; Luke
3:9; 13:7; John 15:2, 6).
Biblical apologetics means “to offer a defense” and is prac-
ticed in different ways by Christians. Some Christian apologists
try to appeal to skeptics by presenting a boatload of facts. With
this evidential method, the claim is made that facts are neutral
and “speak for themselves.” Others believe that reason alone,
devoid of any prior presuppositions (an impossibility), is the
best way to defend the faith. These are not only ineffective apol-
ogetic methods, but they do not follow the biblical model.
Even scientists admit that factual neutrality and reason-alone
approaches are impossible because “the practice of science
. . . rests upon a number of presuppositions about the nature of
reality” that “we usually take for granted.”3 Certain operating
assumptions are assumed, otherwise, no science or communi-
3. John D. Barrow, The World Within the World (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1988), 24
xii AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION
cation can take place. The issue, however, is how to account for
these prior assumptions and how they fit within the context of
a biblical worldview. That’s what Greg L. Bahnsen’s Against All
Opposition does from start to finish.
The Bible shows that apologetics and worldviews in general
deal with fundamental assumptions that guide reason and give
meaning to facts. For example, the first verse of the Bible states
without equivocation or defense, “In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). The necessary operating
assumption is that God exists and without His existence nothing
makes sense. Unless we begin by establishing certain precondi-
tions, we will never establish a valid and workable apologetic meth-
odology, and attacks on the Christian faith will go unanswered.
“Apologetics” does not mean saying you’re sorry for being a
Christian. Christians are not called on to apologize for believing
in God, the trustworthiness of the Bible, the reality of miracles,
and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ that saves sinners from
final judgment. “The Greek word apologia (from which we derive
the English word ‘apologetics’) denotes a speech made in defense,
a reply (especially in the legal context of a courtroom) made to
an accusation. The word originated in the judicial operations of
ancient Athens, but the word occurs several times in the New
Testament as well [Acts 22:1; 25:16; 1 Cor. 9:3; Phil. 1:7]”4
We use apologetics every day. Each time we defend our view
of a subject over the opinions of others, we are practicing apolo-
getics. It’s no less true in the defense of the Christian faith against
all opposition. The Bible commands us to engage in apologetics:
4. Greg L. Bahnsen, “The Reformation of Christian Apologetics,” Founda-

tions of Christian Scholarship, ed. Gary North (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books,
1976), 194–95.
Preface xiii
But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you
are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be
troubled [Isa. 8:12], but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts,
always being ready to make a defense [apologia] to everyone
who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet
with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so
that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile
your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame (1 Peter
3:14–16).
To make an argument for a position does not mean to be ar-

gumentative. That’s why Peter adds, “with gentleness and rever-
ence.” Never give anyone a reason to reject your position other
than the position itself. That is, don’t be a hindrance to what
you are saying by your speech or actions. There is a character
aspect to apologetics. You can be the smartest person in the
world and beat your opponent in every way possible and still
lose the larger argument. People might say, “He may be right on
the facts, but he’s a real jerk.” The way we defend the faith is as
important as the method we use to defend the faith.
Paul makes his defense of the Christian worldview in Ath-
ens by confronting a worldview based on Greek philosophy. He
offers an apologia, a defense of the Christian worldview over
against the prevailing Greek worldview (Acts 17:22–34). Paul
knew enough about Greek philosophy to engage in a debate,
even quoting some of their own poets (17:28).
In addition to making his defense of Christianity before
Greek philosophers, Paul did the same when confronted by his
own countrymen (Acts 22–23) and Roman civil officials (24–
26). He was ready and eager to defend the faith before Caesar
xiv AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION
(25:11, 32). Paul employs the term apologia in his trial speech
before Festus and Agrippa when he says, “I make my defense”
(26:2). The term is used by Paul in his letter to the Philippians
as he is “defending the gospel” (Phil. 1:7, 16).
Paul battled with heretical elements within the church.
He told Timothy, “instruct certain men not to teach strange
doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealo-
gies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering
the administration of God which is by faith” (1 Tim. 1:3–4;
cf. 2 Tim. 4:2–4). He was contending “earnestly for the faith
which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3).
This means that apologetics is not only designed for those
outside the Christian faith, but it includes disputes that occur
within a biblical worldview.
The mind is designed by God to (1) reason, (2) test, (3) inves-
tigate, (4) examine, and (5) accumulate knowledge through the
study of the Bible, creation, history, experience, and everything
else but with certain interpretive first-principles called presup-
positions. We are commanded to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1),
“examine everything,” and “hold fast to that which is good” (1
Thess. 5:21). This was Luke’s methodology (Luke 1:1–4). To
argue for a position is not to argue someone into the kingdom.
An argument’s purpose is to expose the weakness of unbelieving
thought and demonstrate the long-term consequences of being
consistent with a position’s operating assumptions.
Christian apologists give reasons as to why they believe what
they know is true. The audiences may vary—genuine seekers,
skeptics, or hostile unbelievers—but the message and starting
point are the same. The apologist’s job, like a lawyer before a
judge and jury, is to present sound arguments that testify to
Preface xv
the truth. Like the physicist, who assumes the laws of phys-
ics to do physics, and the logician, who assumes the laws of
logic to do logical analysis, the Christian assumes the existence
of God, otherwise there is no way to account for the cosmos
and the way it works, including its physical, logical, and moral
characteristics.
The apologist cannot use himself as the foundational stan-
dard or even the supposed expert opinions of others. Further-
more, the Christian apologist must recognize that his opponent
is not the final arbiter of truth. We should never entertain the
thought that our philosophical foes are the judge and jury in
determining whether God is just and His Word true. Our task
is not to present the Christian faith as a debatable hypothesis, a
study in probability, or just one religious option among many.
We should never say, “You be the judge.”
In a biblical defense of the Christian faith, God is not the
one on trial. How can a finite, fallible, and fallen created being
ever be a competent judge of eternal things? How is it possible
that the creature can legitimately question the Creator? God
asks Job: “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let
him who reproves God answer it” (Job 40:1). Job responded,
knowing the limitations of his own nature, the only way he
could: “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to Thee?
I lay my hand on my mouth” (40:4). God asks Job a series of
questions that demonstrate how limited he is in knowledge and
experience. God asks, “Where were you when I laid the foun-
dation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding” (38:4).
Job was trying to figure out the world and the way it works
based on his own limited frame of reference. This is an impos-
sible task.
xvi AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION
The Christian apologist is not given the option to adopt a

neutral position when defending the faith. Neutrality assumes
that man and God are on an equal footing. Christians are com-
manded not to “answer a fool according to his folly.” Why? If
we try to do this, we will be “like him” in his misguided as-
sumptions and be classified a fool if we assume neutrality or use
his operating assumptions (Prov. 26:4). The Bible assumes that
worldviews based on premises that are contrary to the Bible are
foolishness. This is why Scripture states emphatically, without
apology, that the professed atheist is a “fool” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1).
How can an insignificant creature who is smaller than an
atom when compared to the vastness of the universe be so dog-
matic? There’s not much maneuvering room here. If we aban-
don the governing assumptions of the Christian worldview from
the beginning and argue from a supposed neutral starting point,
we place ourselves in the same category as the atheist, all in the
name of “defending the Christian faith”! This means that the
starting point in the Christian worldview is not subjective; it’s
not just one supposed legitimate opinion among many.
Of course, the unbeliever doesn’t like to hear this. It means
that he is not in control. It’s no wonder that Paul explains the re-
ality of unbelieving thought in stark and uncompromising terms:
For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing fool-
ishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” Where is the wise
man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since
in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not
Preface xvii
come to know God, God was well-pleased through the fool-

ishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For
indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but
we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to
Greeks foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews
and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the
weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor. 1:18–25).
An apologetic methodology that claims a Christian should

be “open,” “objective,” and “tolerant” of all opinions when he
defends the faith is like a person who hopes to stop a man from
committing suicide by taking the hundred-story plunge with
him, hoping to convince the lost soul on the way down. No one
in his right mind would make such a concession to foolishness.
But Christians do it all the time when they adopt the operating
presuppositions of unbelieving thought as if they were neutral
assumptions about reality.
Greg L. Bahnsen’s Against All Opposition is the definitive
apologetic starting point to help Christians develop a sound
biblical apologetic methodology.
INTRODUCTION
By Gary DeMar
In February 1973, Jesus Christ redeemed me in a darkly lit pub

in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was in the final months of my senior
year at Western Michigan University. My athletic career had
faltered a few years before. I performed just well enough to keep
my scholarship.
In December of 1972, during Christmas break I was in an-
other pub, the Wooden Keg, just down the street from the Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh, I heard a familiar voice from the past.
The last time I spoke with David was in junior high. There’s not
much that I remember from that evening other than we had pizza,
caught up on life, and I found out that he was living in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.
I told David that I would be in Ann Arbor sometime in Feb-
ruary to participate in an indoor track and field meet. We made
plans to meet again during the day of the meet since I was not
scheduled to compete until Saturday evening.
Through a stroke of Divine Providence, I knew one other
person in Ann Arbor, but I did not have his address. After
spending some time with David, we were driving back to the
xix
xx AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION
arena when I saw a blue Dodge Dart with a Pennsylvania license

plate stopped at a red light. It was Bill. How was that possible?
Ann Arbor is no small university town. At the time, I did not
realize that God was about to do something great in my life.
I said my goodbyes to David and made my way to Bill’s car.
I never saw David again. God works in mysterious ways.
Bill drove me to the meet, I did my athletic thing, and spent
the next few hours at that Ann Arbor pub where I heard the gos-
pel. My life changed in an instant as I headed back to the house
where I was living with a drug dealer, a vagrant who looked like
Charles Manson, and a few other disreputable occupants. As
expected, my Christian faith became an issue, but I lacked the
ability to offer a coherent defense.
I graduated from college a few months later and within a year
I was a student at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson,
Mississippi, where I was taking courses in Greek, Hebrew, sys-
tematic theology, church history, hermeneutics, and apologetics.
It was at RTS that I met Greg L. Bahnsen, who was an As-
sociate Professor of apologetics and ethics and working on his
Ph.D.
While we were both new to the seminary, I was new to ev-
erything. Greg was a brilliant theologian and apologist, and I
was a student who had a whole lot of learning to do. Within
a few years, Greg and I became friends. But he was always the
teacher and I was always the student, and that was OK with me.
Over time, Greg and I worked together on some conferences
and publishing projects. His book Always Ready includes articles
that he wrote for American Vision’s Biblical Worldview Magazine.
For three years, Greg spoke at American Vision’s week-long
Life Preparation Conferences in the 1990s. He was the anchor
Introduction xxi
speaker for each of the three years he spoke. The young peo-
ple in attendance gave him a standing ovation after his infor-
mation-packed messages at each of the conferences. He was in
constant demand as the young people peppered him with ques-
tions about how to apply the presuppositional model to various
situations and questions.
Our friendship proves that God has a sense of humor in
putting us together. My undergraduate degree is in Physical Ed-
ucation. In 1970, Greg graduated magna cum laude from West-
mont College, receiving his B.A. in philosophy as well as the
John Bunyan Smith Award for his overall grade point average.
From there he went on to Westminster Theological Seminary
in Philadelphia, where he studied under Dr. Cornelius Van Til.
When Greg graduated in May 1973, he simultaneously re-
ceived two degrees, Master of Divinity and Master of Theology,
as well as the William Benton Greene Prize in apologetics and
a Richard Weaver Fellowship from the Intercollegiate Studies
Institute. He next entered the Ph.D. program at the University
of Southern California, where he studied philosophy, specializ-
ing in the theory of knowledge, and received his Ph.D. in 1978
while teaching full time at Reformed Theological Seminary in
Jackson, Mississippi.
I and many others were devastated at the news of his un-
timely death in December of 1995. Who would replace him?
Who could replace him? No one has.
It’s been a privilege to publish a print edition of Greg’s mes-
sages at American Vision’s first Life Preparation Conference ti-
tled Pushing the Antithesis. American Vision also published the
long-lost manuscript of Greg’s book Presuppositional Apologetics:
Stated and Defended (2008).
xxii AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION
Now we come to Against All Opposition. Not long ago I

started listening to the talks that Greg gave at American Vision’s
second Life Preparation Conference. I was struck with how fun-
damentally basic and impacting the material was. Many books
dealing with biblical apologetics assume too much of the reader.
Most Christians don’t have the time or inclination to study the
topic in depth.
To make biblical apologetics accessible to more Chris-
tians—especially young people—American Vision decided to
transcribe and edit the lectures and publish them in a way that
would benefit a growing interest in biblical apologetics from a
presuppositional perspective.
While rummaging through a box of papers and magazine
articles, I came across a letter that Greg sent to me dated Octo-
ber 30, 1985:
I am writing to a few “friends of presuppositionalism” in the

hope that we can work together on a particular project which
will publicly promote and defend this approach to apologet-
ics. We need to take such opportunities, especially since so
few seminaries train men in this outlook today and since “the
traditional method” is being again popularized and pushed in
Reformed circles.
American Vision’s long-term goal is to continue and enhance

the legacy of the work of Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen to the Glory of
God and the advancement of His kingdom.
“We must not be satisfied to present Christianity as the most re-
liable position to hold among the competing options available.
Rather, the Christian faith is the only reasonable outlook avail-
able to men.”
— Greg L. Bahnsen,
Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended.
CHAPTER 1
FAITH OR REASON?
At the Orange County Airport, on my way to Atlanta, Georgia,

via Chicago, I had an interesting experience. A little old lady
was in front of me in line. She came up to the counter and said,
“The number on my ticket says that I’m supposed to get on this
plane, but I’m going to Hartford.”
The agent looked at the ticket and said, “Yes, ma’am. You’re
going to Chicago, and then you’re going to change planes and
go to Hartford.” She said, “I’m supposed to go to Hartford, not
to Chicago.” The agent said, “Yes, that’s right. You’re going to
go to Chicago first and then you’re going to change planes and
go to Hartford.” She thought for a minute and said, “Oh, okay.”
She went and sat down, and then I stepped up to the counter.
And just about that time, she jumped up from her seat and said,
“But on the flight board it says Chicago, Boston.”
“Yes,” the agent said, “you’re going to go to Chicago, get off
the plane, and then get on a plane for Hartford. The people
going to Boston will stay on the plane that you flew on.”
“But it says Boston.”
1
2 AGAINST ALL OPPOSITION
Now you know what the problem was. You know that it
was simple. It was easy to take care of, but she was intimidated.
She was scared that she’s going to go to the wrong place. She
was afraid that if she got on this plane, even though she could
change planes in Chicago, she was going to end up in Boston,
and that wasn’t where she wanted to go.
Unbelievers are in some ways just the opposite of this lady.
They have chosen a way of looking at the world and a way of
thinking and a way of living that is going to land them in Bos-
ton, as it were. They think they can get off the plane in Chicago,
but they can’t.
I want to teach believers not to let unbelievers off the plane
using their own autonomous reasoning and denial of the God of
the Bible by showing them how futile their belief system is. When
they’ve chosen a worldview, make sure they know they’re going all
the way to Boston, which in this case means all the way to hell.
That doesn’t simply mean that after they go through this life,
they’re going to face the judgment of God and be in terror for
the rest of eternity. That is hell, but hell has already begun on
earth for those who do not know the source of life, Jesus Christ.
Hell has begun on earth, not just because their family lives are
messed up, not just because their psychological state is messed
up, not just because there are social problems they experience,
but also because of what has happened to them intellectually.
Unbelievers don’t ordinarily admit that things are really
messed up for them intellectually, but they are, nevertheless.
Unbelievers are on their way to Boston (the full implications
of their worldview beliefs), but they think they can get off in
Chicago (borrow intellectual and moral capital from the
Christian worldview so the full implications of their operat-
Faith or Reason? 3
ing assumptions are not consistently applied). They think

there’s a way to get off the plane, but there isn’t, except for the
counter worldview found only in the Bible.
Unbelievers have chosen a way of looking at

the world—including how they know what they
know and how they should live their lives—
which is contrary to what the Bible teaches.
Unbelievers have chosen a way of looking at the world—in-

cluding how they know what they know and how they should
live their lives—which is contrary to what the Bible teaches.
And because they’ve chosen that, they find themselves on a
plane that’s headed to somewhere they don’t want to go and
they’re looking for a place to bail out, but there isn’t one. I am
going to teach you how to defend your Christian faith by taking
their worldview—their faith—all the way to Boston, as it were.
FA C T S A R E N ’ T E N O U G H
The facts are not what’s really at stake, although it will some-
times seem like they are. Too often, we are made to believe that
if we could just marshal better historical evidence, or better sci-
entific evidence, or better psychological evidence, or whatever
the field may be—if we could just get the facts—then we would
win the respect of unbelievers. But that isn’t where the issue
really is. Having said that, it is also true that you need to know
the facts; in fact, you need to know the facts better than your
opponent. That may seem intimidating, but it is possible.
You remember the biblical story of Gideon in chapter seven

of the book of Judges about how Gideon sent the Midianites
into flight in utter terror? He gave every one of his soldiers the
mark of the leader of a band of soldiers; he gave him the light
that would lead the army into battle. As the Midianites looked
up and saw all these lights, they said, “There must be a huge
army behind them.” There wasn’t, but because they thought
there were so many there, they took off afraid, and Gideon fell
upon them.
Unbelievers practice this Gideon strategy: They give the im-
pression that they are familiar with what’s going on, that they
know all the options, that they’ve read through all the books,
and that they’re way ahead of the game.
I don’t want to be unrealistic and just turn it around and pre-
tend that we know all the options and we know better than they
do, but I want you to remember that they’re finite, and not just
finite but lazy, and not just lazy but prejudicial. When they get
into a certain way of thinking, they tend to pay attention only
to what follows that line of thought. They do not pay attention
to other arguments. Sometimes, in fact, they are just bluffing.
I can say this because I’ve jumped through all the hoops. I’ve
proven that I can memorize like others, I can do footnotes like oth-
ers, I can do this, I can do that, just so I can play their game with
them. I’ve been through all that. Anyone who has been through
graduate school as a Christian and has come out alive knows what
I’m talking about. You play the game; you learn how to do it.
I’ve done this for a long time, and I am certain that 90% of the
people who oppose Christianity do not really know Christianity.
That may seem remarkable. You might think, “The gospel’s so
simple. It’s on every street corner. There are churches everywhere.
Faith or Reason? 5
They all must know what the gospel is. These people know, but
they’ve decided it’s not true.”
I’m also convinced they do not understand what it is. They
do not know your worldview as well as you do, nor do they un-
derstand that their worldview is taking them to hell.
I want you to see the antagonism of the unbeliever and to
know that the facts—or what are called facts, such as the things
you can see with your eyes—are not what separates you from
the unbeliever. What separates you are the underlying world-
view. It’s the philosophy, not the facts.
FA I T H I S N O T C O N T R A R Y T O R E A S O N
Everyone does philosophy, but not everyone does it well.1 If I

can teach you something about philosophical principles, I will
have done you a favor, because you’ll be able to apply this to
whatever field of study you go into.
Let’s begin by realizing that although we’re

defending the Christian faith, we’re going to
do it rationally; we’re going to use our intellect.
Let’s begin by realizing that although we’re defending the

Christian faith, we’re going to do it rationally; we’re going to use
our intellect. What we adhere to is called “the faith.”
According to an old saying, “Faith is believing what you
know isn’t true.” In other words, faith is one thing and ratio-
1. John M. Frame, We Are All Philosophers: A Christian Introduction to Seven

Fundamental Questions (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2019).
nality is another. The devil would love for you to believe that.
Sadly, there are some who profess to follow Jesus Christ but are
secret agents for the devil because they will also encourage you
to think this way, that we have intellect and rationality over
here and faith over there. “Faith is believing what you know
isn’t true.”
And if that’s your mindset, then you don’t have to worry
about anything you encounter, do you? If faith is believing what
you know isn’t true, then the more you show me that I can’t
believe this, the more religious I am to hold on to it.
I’ve known people, including theologians, who talk this kind
of nonsense. I’ve known people who live their lives this way.
It’s like a biology student who says he’s come to believe the
Bible can’t be trusted. He will say, “Scientifically, it’s all messed
up, just an ancient book of superstition.”
But I ask, “Then why do you believe the miracles about Jesus
and his resurrection?”
“I know it’s impossible. I understand that I’ve been taught
that, but that just makes it all the more religious and spiritual. I
hold on to Jesus by faith.”
Do you see how insulting it is to the Lord of History to say,
“I’m holding on to you, Jesus, knowing that you aren’t true.”
What an insult! I hope you can see by now what I am saying:
Faith is in no way believing what you know isn’t true.
Yet I know that in our society, this concept of faith is very
popular. There is a tendency among people when they want to
believe something rather fantastic—that UFOs have come and
visited us, for instance—or something that will be considered
deplorable or pathetic, or even when they continue to honor
some politician who’s been discredited, to say, “I just have faith.”
Faith or Reason? 7
But is there any evidence for what they believe? No, or at least
it’s rather meager or in dispute. It’s extremely difficult to believe
that it leads to what they are claiming. They hold on to these
convictions—very strongly, very personally. And even if what
they believe doesn’t appear to be true, and there seems to be very
good reason for not believing it, they persist in their conviction
because they think they believe it on faith.
There is a tendency among people when they

want to believe something rather fantastic or
something that will be considered deplorable
or pathetic, or even when they continue to
honor some politician who’s been discredited,
to say, “I just have faith.”
I trust you’ve seen this in the newspapers, on television, and

in what the movies portray as religion. This is the general con-
cept that people have about faith. Faith is believing things for
which there is very little reason or believing things for which
there are many reasons not to believe them. Faith then comes
to be seen as irrational or contrary to reason. Faith is seen as
a personal commitment against all the obstacles that stand in
the way, all the obstacles of being honest and reasonable and
looking at the evidence. They will say, “I am holding on to this
conviction because I have faith.”
As a Christian—as someone known to have faith and as
someone who encourages others to have faith—you will be im-
mediately misperceived as someone who is calling for the cruci-
fixion of the intellect.
Unbelievers think that to have faith means to let your emo-

tions run wild and turn off your brain. They think that Chris-
tians live in two worlds. They live in this emotional world, full
of all these things they do on Sunday morning, but then Mon-
day through Friday (and sometimes on Saturday) their brains
kick back in. It’s like brain off, brain on. Go to church, brain
off; go to school, brain on. Faith means the brain is off and the
emotions are running with a high degree of personal volition
and commitment.
Unbelievers think that to have faith means to let

your emotions run wild and turn off your brain.
Take this definition of faith from the Dictionary of Philoso-

phy. This article is by a man who teaches in the field of philos-
ophy, so he should know better. Peter Angeles defines faith as
“belief in something despite the evidence against it” and “belief
in something even though there is an absence of evidence for
it.”2 Given either of these popular misunderstandings of the
term—whereby the Christian call to “faith” is conceived of as
either contrary to reason or at least without reasons—Christi-
anity does indeed look quite irrational. “Faith” becomes a buzz-
word for putting your intellect out of gear, suspending a cau-
tious and critical attitude toward things, and making a personal
commitment without sound evidence.
If someone accepts this definition of faith, then we as Chris-
tians—who claim to have faith in the Bible and faith in the Lord
2. Peter A. Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Barnes & Noble,

1981), 94.
Faith or Reason? 9
Jesus Christ—are going to be viewed as irrational people, peo-

ple who’ve turned off their brains and are letting their emotions
run, people who have a high degree of volitional commitment.
In this way, faith becomes a buzzword for living in two
worlds, and you will be disdained for having this concept of
faith. People will think you are stupid, and if you buy into that
concept of faith, you are agreeing with them.
TURNING OUR BRAINS

O F F I S N O T FA I T H
I trust that you don’t want to follow that understanding of faith

because you do want to be prepared to deal with intellectual
challenges in life. You want to be able to deal with the opposi-
tion to Christianity—and not by saying, “Well, we don’t worry
about whether it is true or false; we just turn off our brains and
enjoy feeling good about Jesus.”
The Bible doesn’t teach that view of faith, and because it
doesn’t, I think it is fair to say, without trying to be personally
insulting, it is stupid to believe that view of faith. It would
be better to say Christianity is not true, but it makes me feel
good, just as the belief in Santa Claus used to make me feel
good. It would be better to say that about Jesus than to say, “I
believe in Jesus because I have faith, even though I know it’s
not true.”
Christianity is going to be viewed as irrational by certain
people you meet, but not all people will mean the same thing by
that. I’m going to show you some distinctions here so you can
understand very clearly the different kinds of irrationality with
which you might be charged.
Some people will claim that the idea of God becoming a

man—the incarnation—is a logical contradiction. For them,
this idea of there being a God-man is incoherent. It’s a violation
of the alleged laws of logic. When they charge Christianity with
being irrational, what they mean is that it is contrary to the
rules of logic; it is illogical. So that’s one way to be irrational:
violating the laws of logic. When somebody says Christianity is
irrational, they might mean that you believe things—like the
Trinity or the incarnation—that are illogical.
Here’s another way that Christians might be considered irra-
tional: there is no observational, scientific, or historical substan-
tiation for the magnificent claims that are made in the Bible,
and yet you believe them. For instance, the Bible tells us that
Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, and He raised the dead.
When someone claims that believing these events is irrational,
what they mean is that there’s no evidence for them, no sci-
entific explanation for them. They are claiming that there are
empirical defects in the claims made by Christians, or in the
claims found in the Bible.
R AT I O N A L I S M A N D E M P I R I C I S M
Let me explain what I mean by this. In the ancient world,

among the Greek philosophers, there were two basic approaches
to doing philosophy: thinking is believing and seeing is believ-
ing. On the first approach, if we simplify it, some philosophers
said, “If you want to figure out the world, you have to stop and
think about it.” In other words, go to your favorite chair, sit
down, and reflect. Philosophers who followed this “stop-and-
think” technique were rationalists. They believed that they
Faith or Reason? 11
needed clear and distinct ideas that were consistent with each
other. For them, what was important was the life of the mind
and making sure that ideas don’t conflict with each other.
Philosophers who followed the stop-and-think

technique were “rationalists.”
Other philosophers were less patient with this approach.

Their approach was the “go, look, and see” method of figuring
out the world. They would say, “Whatever you may imagine
in your armchairs, you’re speculating and using your reason.
But we’ve got to make sense out of what we encounter in the
world—what we see, and what we touch, and what we taste.
We need to have the facts.” This is largely what Americans
think are “the facts.” The facts are what you can touch and
what you can see.
Philosophers of the “seeing is believing” type

are known as “empiricists.”
These philosophers were the “seeing-is-believing” type and

are known as “empiricists.” This is what I mean by empirical:
a way of knowing that’s dependent upon observation and per-
sonal experience with the senses. So, some people would crit-
icize Christianity as being irrational because it is contrary to
empirical evidence.
Those are two ways you might be criticized for being irra-
tional: (1) that you believe the claims made in the Bible even
though there is no empirical substantiation for them or (2) that

the claims made in the Bible, which you believe, are in logical
conflict with each other.
Such critics will find what they see as specific imperfections
in Christianity and go after them. They might say, “How can
you believe that an axe head can float (2 Kings 6:1–7)? How
can you believe in creation, the special creation of man? How
can you believe that a man, Jesus, is actually God?” You may
think, “Wow, these are pretty strong criticisms,” but these are
the easy ones, because if it comes down to it, all we need to
show is that our various dogmas are logically consistent with
our operating assumptions. We just have to show that these
things are not in conflict with the known principles of science
or historiography or other disciplines.
We will come back to this, but now I want to deal with
the tougher charge of being irrational. Much more vicious is
the claim made by critics who say that to be religious or to be
a Christian is to be dedicated to believing the absurd for its
absurdity. I want to make a point here, a distinction that’s very
important. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and someone
might say, “That’s absurd,” and what he means is that it’s empir-
ically defective to believe that sort of thing, that it’s unscientific.
I’m not talking about that kind of criticism. I’m talking about
the criticism that says, “You believe something that’s absurd just
because it is absurd,” which is the conception of faith that many
people have.
Many people think that religious believers glory in the fact
that their faith is without rational support, that they glory in
the fact that it’s apparently untrue, that it has to be endorsed in
the face of good sense and over against contrary reasons.
Faith or Reason? 13
CHRISTIANITY AND LOGIC
Sadly, unbelievers who think this way have often been given the
help of certain Christian theologians who will say that Christian-
ity is indifferent to logic. In fact, it gets so bad among the Neo-or-
thodox theologians that sometimes they’re even indifferent to
truth. And in one sense of the word “religious,” that’s a very reli-
gious thing to do. In fact, it’s a sense which we should recognize
even among evangelical Christians. That is, to hold something re-
ligiously means that you are committed, that you have faith in it,
that you are going to hold on to it, despite the ridicule that comes.
Now, the Bible does speak about this. The Bible says the
world will call what we believe “foolishness.” In other words, to
be really religious means to hold on to something that appears
to be foolish, even though it isn’t. But in the case that I’m talking
about, we have people who hold on to things which they them-
selves say are foolish, and simply because these things seem fool-
ish or absurd, they’re being very religious in holding on to them.
For example, let’s say you got to college and you come to find
out that your roommate is looking forward to Christmas because
he or she believes Santa Claus is coming. When you talk to him
or her, you say, “You realize there’s no Santa Claus?” And they say,
“Yes, all the evidence is against it, I agree, but I’m very devoted
to the idea of Santa Claus. This idea of there being a Santa Claus
has so gripped my heart that I’ve given my life to Santa Claus.”
Would you say that this person has a lot of “religious devotion”?
There is certainly a sense in which we could call this religious. Your
roommate holds onto a belief in Santa Claus, even against the facts.
There are people who think that being religious means some-
thing like that, believing something that’s absurd just because it
is absurd. As Christians, we are often put in this category. There

are people who think we elevate the value of our personal faith in
direct proportion to the degree that our faith is dubious or blind
or mystical, that believers should degrade the worth of their faith
to any extent that their faith accords with good reason.
DO CHRISTIANS BELIEVE
BECAUSE IT’S ABSURD?
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who was an insane philos-

opher, wrote in his book, The Antichrist: Attempt at a Critique
of Christianity, about his derision toward the attitude that says
faith must be brought into line with the facts, by saying, belief
(faith) means “not wanting to know what is true.”3 Faith means
holding to the absurd because it is absurd.4 All criticism in this
vein flows from a very fundamental mistake about the nature of
Christian faith.
One of the best books written in the 20th century (and
still is) was written by J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) enti-
tled What is Faith? Machen was a Presbyterian theologian who
fought the apologetic battle with secular scholars, liberals in
the church, and unbelievers outside the church. In his book,
Machen wrote, “we believe that Christianity flourishes not in
the darkness, but in the light.”5 He said that the Holy Spirit
would bring about an awakening in the Church and that one
of the ways in which the Holy Spirit would do this would be
through an awakening of the intellect.
3. The Antichrist. Written in 1888 but published in 1895. Sec. 52.
4. Credo quia absurdum is a Latin phrase that means “I believe because it is
absurd,” often misattributed to Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240) in his De Carne Christi.
5. J. Gresham Machen, What is Faith? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1925), 18.
Faith or Reason? 15
Machen did not want people to believe in the gospel be-

cause it sounded good, even though scientists and historians
told them it couldn’t be true. He resisted what he called “the
disastrous opposition that has been set up between knowledge
and faith.”6 He wrote, “Faith need not be too humble or too
apologetic before the bar of reason. Christian faith is a thor-
oughly reasonable thing.”7
Are we irrational because we believe the absurd? No. We be-
lieve what appears to be absurd to the world. Our job is to show
the world that what it believes is, in fact, the real absurdity. To
go back to my metaphor: They are on the plane heading straight
for Boston, thinking they can get off in Chicago.
J. Gresham Machen wrote, “Faith need not

be too humble or too apologetic before the
bar of reason. Christian faith is a thoroughly
reasonable thing.”
Regardless of what certain misguided spokesmen may say, the

Bible is not indifferent to logical blunders or factual mistakes.
It was to vindicate the truth of his religious claims that Mo-
ses challenged the magicians of Pharaoh’s court (Ex. 7:8–13; 2
Tim. 3:8–9). It was to vindicate the truth of his religious con-
victions that Elijah competed with and taunted the priests of
Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:16–45). The Old Testament
prophets knew that their words would be demonstrated to be
true when their predictions were fulfilled in history for all to see.
6. Machen, What is Faith?, 26.

7. Machen, What is Faith?, 243.
When Jesus came into this world, He claimed to be the

Truth. His resurrection was a mighty sign and wonder that pro-
vided evidence for the veracity of His claims and for the apos-
tolic message based upon His claims.
In 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, after the apostle Paul had been
at the center of Greek philosophy in Athens (Acts 17:16–34),
he leaves Athens and writes to Corinth. It is important to read
what he says in those first two chapters about the relationship
of faith and reason. “Despite what the Jews and Greeks might
think to themselves,” he wrote, “the gospel is in fact the very
wisdom of God which destroys the arrogance of worldly phi-
losophy” (1 Cor. 1:18–25.) Similarly, in 1 Timothy 6:20, Paul
spoke of the claims of knowledge “falsely so-called.”
Paul was eager to reason with people about Jesus Christ, not
because there isn’t a place for faith, but because faith is not con-
trary to reason. In fact, as it turns out, faith is the very founda-
tion for reasoning to the point that those who claim that reason
is the foundation for knowledge must have faith that it’s so.
Today, there’s a reversal. Most people think we must stand
on the platform of reason and then maybe find a place for faith.
But Paul says if you don’t have faith in the God of the Bible,
there’s no place for reason. “Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the debater of this age?” Paul asks. Bring them
on, we’re ready for them. “Hasn’t God made foolish the wisdom
of this world” (1 Cor. 1:20)?
God has continued to make foolish the wisdom of this world
from the first century down to today. God will continue to do
the job of making those who promote reason over against faith
look like fools. And He’s going to do that job through you. You
may find that hard to believe. A lot of people looking at you
Faith or Reason? 17
may find that hard to believe. But God is in the business of

doing amazing things.
There was a day when a lot of people would not have bet on
David. Here’s this little scruffy shepherd kid, too short to be a
king and not properly equipped withe right weapons. All he has
is a slingshot going against the world’s giant. What a great lesson.
I hope you haven’t consigned that story to Sunday school lessons
as just a fanciful story. God does great things with weak instru-
ments. He will continue to make the wisdom of this world crum-
ble before those of us who have nothing more than a slingshot
and a few well-chosen questions to show that the plane of unbe-
lief is still going to Boston where unbelivers do not want to go
with their faulty assumptions about the world and how it works.
GLOSSARY
Deism: God exists but He does not interact with His creation.
Empiricism: The view that sense experience is the foundation
of human knowledge. Seeing is believing.
Neo-orthodoxy: A reaction to liberalism. Teaches that the Bi-
ble is not the Word of God but a series of propositions to be
believed so that it becomes the Word of God to the person
reading and acting on it. In this way the real Word (Jesus) is
encountered and experienced. Many of the events recorded
in the Bible are not historical (e.g., Jesus’ resurrection) and
don’t need to be. There is no fixed standard of truth.
Pantheism: From two Greek words, pan meaning “all” and
theos meaning “God.” According to Scripture, God is dis-
tinct from His creation: “In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). If the cosmos were to go
out of existence, God would still exist. Pantheism teaches

that all is one, thus, everything is God. All things make up
what some people claim is “God.”
Rationalism: From the Latin ratio “reason.” (1) The view that
human reason is the final judge of what’s true and false, right
and wrong. (2) The philosophical position that human rea-
son is to be trusted above human sense-experience.
Transcendence (biblical): The view that God exists above and inde-
pendently from all that He created (contra pantheism) and yet
is knowable and acts in and among His creation (contra deism).
Transcendence (nonbiblical): The argument that God is so far
from us that we cannot know Him or truly speak of Him.
In this sense, modern theologians sometimes say that God is
“wholly other” or “wholly hidden.”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What really separates the believer from the unbeliever? Is it

faith? Explain.
2. “To have faith” often means what to unbelievers?
3. When unbelievers charge that Christianity is irrational, what
do they mean?
4. In what way are Christian dogmas “logically consistent”?
5. What are two ways Christians are sometimes criticized for
being irrational?
6. Explain what J. Gresham Machen means when he states that
“the Christian faith is a thoroughly reasonable thing.”
7. Does Neo-orthodoxy teach that Jesus is God?
8. What did the Apostle Paul mean when he wrote that if you
don’t have faith, there’s no place for reason?
CHAPTER 2
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE
TO THINK WITHOUT
PRESUPPOSITIONS
In the previous chapter, we saw that people see faith as irrational

because it is contrary to the laws of logic or in conflict with em-
pirical evidence—or that faith is believing what is absurd just
because it is absurd. But faith is also sometimes seen as contrary
to proof, and that is a slightly different concept from the ones
we have already considered.
The first two notions we have looked at—that faith violates
the laws of logic or is contrary to empirical evidence—see the
Christian faith as untrue because it is illogical or because it is
contrary to the facts. In the third case, Christian faith is untrue
because it’s absurd, and some people think that’s wonderful: It
must be absurd, because that way my belief in it is really faith.
The fourth notion is in a different category. People who hold
this view don’t say that the Christian faith entails believing what
19
is untrue. Rather, they say it entails believing something con-

trary to proof.
People will often protest against the presence of any attitude
of faith in a person’s view of God or his philosophy, maintain-
ing very arrogantly—and also, to be honest, naively—that they
will not believe anything that has not first been fully proven to
them. They will be led by proof, not by faith. “I’m not like you
weak-minded people; I need proof.”
FAT H E R O F T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T
People who say this sort of thing often think that their thinking
is the spirit of René Descartes. Descartes (1596–1650) was a
philosopher who is often considered the father of the Enlight-
enment, and certainly the father of an autonomous spirit and
philosophy. He was a French scholar, a theoretician who kicked
off the age of reason.
Descartes was concerned that people should strive to realize
and to follow a reliable method for arriving at their beliefs. He
wanted a method that would lead to the truth, rather than to
error. He wanted a recipe for sorting out superstition and blind-
ness and misleading notions, so that if we were to follow this
recipe, we would finally have nothing left to believe but what
is true.
According to Descartes, that method required doubting and
criticizing everything you possibly could and accept nothing to
be true that you did not clearly recognize to be true because it
survived the method of doubt. If you can doubt it, don’t trust
it. But if you find something that you can’t doubt, then that be-
comes a starting point for knowledge. You may not be a budding
It’s Impossible to Think Without Presuppositions 21
philosopher, but perhaps an approach like this has occurred to

you. If we had a way of getting down to the thing that we can’t
give up, the thing that is unquestionable, then we could build
out from that, little by little. We would have a secure founda-
tional knowledge that we could use for encountering the world.
Descartes thought that was the way things should go. He
sought to doubt every thought that came into his head. He
would say, “Am I really eating an apple or am I only dream-
ing that I’m eating an apple? I might be only dreaming.” Have
you ever had a dream that was so vivid—that seemed so real—
that when you woke up you were surprised? I have actually had
dreams where I thought to myself, “Be careful. There’s a differ-
ence between dreaming and reality”—and all the while I was
actually dreaming.
Descartes said, “Am I eating the apple or am I dreaming that
I’m eating the apple? Well, I might be dreaming, and so I can’t
make this experience the foundation of everything that I know.”
He doubted everything until he finally came to what was un-
questionable. He systematically doubted, and then a door
opened to certainty, he thought. He thought of something that
could not be doubted, and that was his own existence.
For Descartes, the foundation of everything

was himself. Here is a modern man for you.
He may have lived in the 1600s, but he was a
modern man.
For Descartes, the foundation of everything was himself.

Here is a modern man for you. He may have lived in the 1600s,
but he was a modern man. “What is at the center of the uni-

verse? Me. Maybe there isn’t a God. Maybe there isn’t a world
out there. Maybe there aren’t apples to eat and there are only
dreams to be had. But I know that I exist.”
How did he come to that conclusion? He said, “If I’m doubt-
ing, then I must at least exist in order to do the doubting. Maybe
I’m doubting and I’m actually doubting that I’m doubting.” Re-
member the apple? He said, “I might be dreaming. Maybe I’m
dreaming that I’m dreaming. But, you see, if I’m dreaming that
I’m dreaming or doubting that I’m doubting, then it must still
be me what’s doing the dreaming or doubting.” You cannot give
up your own existence. And so, Descartes concluded, “I think,
therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum). Technically, it was “I doubt,
therefore I am” (dubito ergo sum). “I doubt, and therefore I
must exist in order to do the doubting.”
I have had Christian philosophers tell me that that is a good
argument. It might sound good, but it is not a good argument.
It begs the question: What did Descartes take as his evidence
from which he would draw his conclusion? He took as his da-
tum, his fixed starting point, “I doubt.” In so doing, he may have
written the conclusion right into the premise he started with.
“I doubt.” He did not have to express it in the first person
(“I”). He could have said, “Doubting is occurring.” Does it fol-
low from the premise, “doubting is occurring” that I exist as
the doubter? No. You may have a hard time understanding how
Descartes could know that doubting was occurring if he didn’t
exist to be the doubter, but the fact is that if he wanted to apply
his method stringently, he should not have begged the question.
He should have just said, “Doubting is going on.” And from
that it does not follow that he himself exists.
It is not a good argument. Nevertheless, people today who

say they will not follow faith but only proof are following Des-
cartes, because Descartes said, “Doubt everything until you find
a firm foundation from which you can then build up an edifice
of knowledge.”
DOUBTING EVERYTHING
IS FOR FOOLS
Modern-day followers of Descartes who say they will doubt ab-

solutely everything and accept nothing without proof are re-
ally acting like arrogant fools. Why? Because no one can doubt
everything.
If you truly doubted everything, that would mean that you
were doubting that you were doubting as well as doubting your
memory of past experiences. There would be no memory you
could rely on. You would have to doubt your present sensations
and the connections between them, such as the connection you
draw when you put your hand on a hot stove and say, “That hurt!”
You would have to doubt the meaning of the words you use. You
would have to doubt all the principles by which you reason.
A fundamental set of beliefs is inescapable for

everyone. Every person has a logically basic
set of convictions by which he thinks and lives
his life.
Try the experiment and see if you can doubt everything. But
of course, if you were to doubt everything, you wouldn’t be
thinking at all, much less doubting. A fundamental set of beliefs

is inescapable for everyone. Every person has a logically basic set
of convictions by which he thinks and lives his life.
That isn’t to say that everything is at the same level in our
thinking. There are some things we can doubt. “I thought I
heard a car outside, but maybe I was wrong.” That’s one level.
Then there are other things that I might doubt. I might doubt
that I understand Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, but
then again maybe I do. I might doubt that my senses are reli-
able, and so forth. There are different levels, but everyone has
some logically basic set of principles and beliefs that cannot be
given up.
People delude themselves when they say they will not accept
anything without proof or demonstration, because, you see,
they do not prove their foundational principles in the way they
think they do. They do have a place for faith in their outlook
and in living their lives.
Why don’t unbelievers catch on to this? Why do they not
realize that they have a foundational faith about how things
are connected in their experience, about the meaning of their
words, and so forth? The answer is that they don’t realize this
because every person around them is in the same situation, and
so they think, “We can take all of that for granted.”
It is amazing to me when I debated with unbelievers, both
formally and informally, how often this claim consistently came
up. When you start challenging something they believe, they
say, “Well, but everybody knows that’s true.” Of course, when
they do that, they have just walked into a trap becuase it’s not
enough to say that everyone knows this or that, it’s how are
these known things accounted for in a matter-only worldview?
W H AT I S T H E R E A S O N YO U
KNOW SOMETHING?
“Everybody knows that?” But if everybody knows that, then

you ought to have a very good reason for it. What is that reason
for what you say you know? When so many in the world take it
for granted that we can trust our senses, unbelievers don’t un-
derstand it when we come along and say, “On your worldview,
why do you trust your senses?” They have a foundational faith,
but they think theirs is reasonable. They know that we have a
foundational faith, but according to them ours is unreasonable.
What I want to teach you to do is to turn the tables on them
and say, “We do have a foundational faith. You’re right about
that. Our foundational faith makes trusting our senses and the
laws of logic and moral absolutes very reasonable. But given
your foundational faith, those things are not reasonable at all.
Given your foundational faith, logic is gone. Science is gone.
History is gone. Morality is gone. Social harmony is gone. Hu-
man dignity is gone.”
Our foundational faith makes trusting your

senses and the laws of logic and moral
absolutes very reasonable.
What a faith they have! When people say they will hold on
to nothing except what is based on proof or demonstration,
they are hypocrites. They cannot live that way. They do not
live that way. They do not live by their own standards and, of
course, that is one of the highest forms of self-refutation.
There is another kind of irrationality that we are sometimes

accused of having because we hold to the Christian faith. There
are people who say, “I can’t go along with you and accept the
Christian faith because we are not to make assumptions in our
reasoning. But you Christians assume all sorts of things.”
Let me quote a liberal scholar, Charles Gore (1853–1932).
He once wrote, “It seems to me that the right course for anyone
who cannot accept the mere voice of authority, but feels the im-
perative obligation to ‘face the arguments’ and to think freely, is
to begin at the beginning and to see how far he can reconstruct
his religious beliefs stage by stage on a secure foundation as far
as possible without any preliminary assumptions. . . . ”1
He is saying, you must go back and reconstruct your religious
convictions without bringing in any assumptions. Stage by stage,
step by step, build up what you believe from scratch, as it were.
YO U C A N ’ T T H I N K O R R E A S O N
WITHOUT PRESUPPOSITIONS
You must look at the religious hypothesis from the beginning

without preliminary assumptions or—and now I will introduce
a word you may not be familiar with—without presupposi-
tions, without anything taken for granted that informs and
guides your reasoning process.
As you might guess from what I said about the “I don’t be-
lieve anything that’s contrary to proof ” position, I am going to
say something similar about this view: “It is really impossible to
think without presuppositions.”
1. Charles Gore, Belief in God: The Reconstruction of Belief (New York:

Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 2.
Our demonstration of everything we believe is by means of

other beliefs. That is, I prove this by appealing to this and then I
prove this by appealing to this and so on. It is impossible to
prove every belief by independent beliefs.
Our demonstration of everything we believe is

by means of other beliefs.
For instance, when I prove that ice melts at room tempera-

ture, I am pressing into service certain standards of thinking
and certain procedures for demonstration. I say, “Ice melts at
room temperature.” You say, “No, it won’t.” I prove that it does.
But in so doing, I depended upon a certain procedure, certain
standards, and so forth.
Then suppose you say, “But how do you know you are right
about that procedure? How do you know you’re right about
those standards? How do I know that you’ve chosen the correct
criteria for demonstrating something scientifically? Can you be
sure you’ve used those standards properly?”
Here’s how I would do it. I would put a chunk of ice in a
glass dish at room temperature and then talk to you for a few
minutes. Then I would look and say, “The ice has melted. You’re
wrong and I’m right!”
That’s a great demonstration—until someone says, “How do
you know it’s room temperature?” Or, better yet, “How do you
know that was a piece of ice.” Not to be thwarted from my scien-
tific quest, I would then go about proving it was room temperature
and that it was a chunk of ice. But in proving those things, what
would I be relying on? Some other principles and observations.
Then someone might push the argument even further. Can I

be sure that I used these procedures properly? Do I know that I
have the right procedures to use? Do I have the right beginning
conditions or assumptions or non-negotiables in this method?
Has my execution of the procedures been faultless? To prove all
those things, I’m going to have to use further argumentation,
further proof, and on and on it would go.
If there is no assumed starting point for a demonstration,
then a demonstration can’t get started. And if it can’t get started,
it can’t get finished.
If an unbeliever considers Christianity irrational simply on
the basis that it allows for something to be accepted without
independent demonstration, then the unbeliever is being unre-
alistic. He must be pressed to see that he ends up refuting him-
self, not simply Christianity, by those values and demands he
relies on and uses. The unbeliever says, “The problem is that
you’re using presuppositions when you try to defend the faith.”
And then you must show that the unbelievers are using presup-
positions as well. It comes down to this: If using presupposi-
tions means that you’re being irrational, and I have shown that
you are using presuppositions, then you are irrational too.
If using presuppositions means that you’re

being irrational and I have shown that you are
using presuppositions, then you are irrational
too.
Now you must either accept that we are all in this leaky boat
of irrationality or give up your principle that no presupposi-
tions may be used in an argument. You see, it is the unbeliever’s

attitude that turns out to be truly irrational because it inconsis-
tently requires something of its opponents that it does not live
up to itself.
You find this kind of argument in the Bible. Paul says to
the Jews, “You who criticize others, you who say that God will
condemn stealing, do you not rob from temples?” Paul is say-
ing, “You didn’t even live up to your own standards. That’s how
much of a hypocrite you are” (Rom. 2:22).
This sort of thing happens in the moral domain, but it also
happens in the intellectual domain. Someone says, “I am not
going to grant you any presuppositions. You can’t try to prove
something based on presuppositions.” And then you can turn
around and say, “Then you also must live by that standard. You
try to prove something, and we won’t allow you any presuppo-
sitions either.”
Your conversation might not go exactly like this, word for
word, but it will come down to the same thing. The person
you’re speaking with, for instance, will say, “My presuppositions
aren’t presuppositions because everyone agrees with me.” Once
you have shown that person his or her presuppositions, this will
be the response: “But ours are different, because everyone agrees
with ours. Yours are the ones under question.”
That will seem a little bit arbitrary to you, a little bit unfair.
We aren’t playing on a level field now. But I would accept those
terms and argue with the unbeliever: “That’s okay. I’ll give you
the higher ground. I’ll give you your presuppositions. I will al-
low you to continue reasoning, and I’ll reason in favor of mine.”
How? You can’t prove your presuppositions because they’re pre-
suppositions, right? But I will argue for my presuppositions by
saying, “If you don’t use my presuppositions, you will destroy

science, logic, morality, and human dignity.”
What you might think is the high ground turns out to be
the low ground. I can say, “I’ll give you the upper hand on this,
and you’ll still turn out looking like a fool—not because I’m so
smart, but because you’re reasoning in a foolish way.”
PRESUPPOSITIONS ARE
I N E V I TA B L E A N D N E C E S S A R Y
Are you uncomfortable with that? If this is just name-calling,

you should be. I don’t believe in name-calling. You don’t win
any arguments by calling people names. But the Bible describes
unbelievers as fools. Because of the connotations of the word
“fool” in our culture, it’s difficult to use that and get people
on board. To get their attention, you might say, “That’s really
stupid,” you catch some of the drift, some of the impact, of
the biblical word “fool” or “foolish.” (e.g., Eccl. 10:2; Isa. 32:6;
Prov. 1:22; 18:2; 10:23; 12:16, 23; 14:1; 15:5; 18:7; 19:1;
26:11).
What would you make of a person—recalling the example
from the first chapter—who is on an airplane to Boston and
cannot get out in Chicago and yet doesn’t want to go to Bos-
ton? Wouldn’t you say that’s foolish? Not that they have done
this by mistake, like the lady I overheard at the airport might
have. They’re someone on the plane, fully committed to this
flight, the flight of human autonomy, and it’s taking a ride into
the dumpster when it comes to logic. It’s taking a ride into the
dumpster when it comes to science and history and human dig-
nity and moral absolutes.
They are fully committed to the flight of human autonomy,

and then they say, “But we don’t want to go there.” That’s fool-
ish. I will take on the unbeliever even on his unfair, uneven
terms, because in the end, when I get done with my argument,
he is not going to have any ground to stand on. I am going to
say, “Given your worldview, you cannot argue with me unless
you borrow my operating assumptions about thinking, logic,
and reality.”
“Given the biblical worldview, you cannot

argue with me unless you borrow my
operating assumptions about thinking, logic,
and reality.”
If an unbeliever considers Christianity irrational because

Christians allow something to be accepted without independent
demonstration, the unbeliever in question is being unrealistic.
He is being hypocritical, not living up to his own demands. He
is the one who is supremely unreasonable.
You see, as a Christian, I do not violate the laws of logic.
As a Christian, I do not believe anything contrary to empirical
evidence. As a Christian, I do not believe what is absurd because
it is absurd. As a Christian, I am not committed to anything
that is contrary to proof. As a Christian, my convictions are not
based on something that has no assumptions; rather, what I’m
saying is that everyone has assumptions.
The problem is not that we, as Christians, believe things
without evidence; the problem is that the unbeliever doesn’t like
the kind of evidence we have.
Many critics will finally acknowledge that you, as a Christian,

engage in reasoning. You want to be logical, and you do appeal
to evidence to support your beliefs. Many will admit, when you
press them, that there really isn’t anyone—even among religious
skeptics—who can proceed without any assumptions. There
isn’t anyone who can prove everything he believes by indepen-
dent considerations. What they object to, finally, is the kind of
evidence to which we appeal as Christians: believing something
based on God’s personal authority, rather than on the basis of
impersonal and universally accepted (but not demonstrated)
norms of observation, logic, and utility. I have evidence for what
I believe, great evidence: the very Word of God. But they don’t
want that kind of evidence. That sort of evidence is founded on
a Person, the living God. It’s not like going to a dictionary or an
encyclopedia and looking up something.
GOD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM,

KNOWLEDGE, AND MORALITY
When people encounter the Word of God, they are not encoun-
tering something you could write down in an encyclopedia and
leave it there; they are encountering God Himself. It makes the
unbeliever uncomfortable—and reasonably so. The unbeliever
ought to fear God, because God is angry with sinners. The un-
believer knows this to be true in his or her heart of hearts. The
unbeliever does not want to have to deal with a personal God.
When you appeal to the Word of the living and true Creator
of heaven and earth, when you appeal to the Word of the per-
sonal God, the unbeliever doesn’t want that kind of evidence.
When he calls for evidence, he wants something impersonal,
logical, scientific—something that deals with utility or useful-

ness of a person’s beliefs. If you’re going to prove Christianity
to be true, you must do so over here in this supposed neutral
arena. He doesn’t want the Word of God to be the evidence
upon which to rest his argument.
Julian Huxley (1887–1975), in his book Religion Without
Revelation, wrote these words: “I believe firmly that the sci-
entific method, although slow and never claiming to lead to
complete truth, is the only method which in the long run will
give satisfactory foundations for beliefs” and “we quite assur-
edly at present know nothing beyond this world and natural
experience.”
He writes elsewhere, “We quite assuredly at present know
nothing beyond this world and natural experience.”2 For Hux-
ley, Christian faith should not be grounded in revealed author-
ity; it must be grounded in the authority of natural science.
What is Huxley showing us when he says this? He is openly
displaying his own faith commitment, with its prejudices against
Christianity. Notice that he says, on the one hand, the scientific
method cannot give the complete truth. He openly admits that.
But then he turns around, on the other hand, and—based on
the scientific method—completely rules out knowing anything
beyond the natural world.
That is a good illustration of how simple apologetics can be-
come. Unbelievers hang themselves. Huxley says, on the one
hand, the scientific method is slow. We can’t know everything,
but we are working, working, working at it. But we can assur-
edly tell you that there is nothing beyond the natural world.
That’s kind of like saying, “I have no idea what next year’s model
2. Julian Huxley, Religion without Revelation (New York: Mentor, 1957), 15, 17.
car will look like, but it won’t look like that.” But if you have no
idea what it’s going to look like, then you can’t rule that out. In
fact, you can’t even tell us what the range of possibilities is—and
neither could Huxley.
Why does Huxley count out the kind of evidence that is
offered by Christians for their faith? Why does he disregard rev-
elation as a source of information about God? Because Huxley
has a faith commitment and devotion to naturalism. He is com-
mitted fully to the natural scientific method, and so he does not
want any revelation. But does he have a reason for not accepting
revelation? Does he have a reason for not having faith in what
we have faith in? Yes. The reason is that he has a contrary faith.
T H E WA R I S B E T W E E N
FA I T H A N D FA I T H
The war is not between reason and faith; it is between faith and
faith. I don’t mean that faith is just an arbitrary leap. It is one
kind of reasoning process over against another kind of reason-
ing process, both of which want to use logic, both of which
want to use our senses, both of which want to make things work
in this world—but one of which admits a word from God while
the other one does not.
In his book titled God and Philosophy, Antony Flew (1923–
2010) expressed the unbeliever’s criticism of the Christian faith
for resting on God’s authority. (While Flew did not become a
Christian before he died, he did come to believe in an Intelli-
gent Creator.)3 “An appeal to authority here cannot be allowed
3. “For much of his career Flew was known as a strong advocate of atheism,
arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God
to be final and overriding, for what is in question precisely is the

status and authority of all religious authorities. It is inherently
impossible for either faith or authority to serve as themselves
the ultimate credentials of revelation.”4
What he is saying is that the teaching of Scripture cannot be
accepted on the authority of God’s speaking therein because it
is precisely that authority that is under question by the unbe-
liever. At first, that sounds reasonable. How often have I seen
people present that approach? And at first, you want to say,
“Yes, that’s right. You can’t appeal to the Bible to prove the Bi-
ble.” But there’s more to the argument.
All ultimate authorities must authorize them-

selves.
What Flew is saying is that, in the end, God’s Word can-

not be the ultimate authority. I stress the word ultimate because
all ultimate authorities must authorize themselves. If someone
says, “This is my ultimate authority,” then you say, “Well, how
can you prove it?” If the person says, “I prove that ultimate au-
surfaces. . . . However, in 2004 he changed his position, and stated that he now
believed in the existence of an Intelligent Creator of the universe, shocking col-
leagues and fellow atheists. In order to further clarify his personal concept of
God, Flew openly made an allegiance to Deism, more specifically a belief in the
Aristotelian God, and dismissed on many occasions a hypothetical conversion to
Christianity, Islam or any other religion. He stated that in keeping his lifelong
commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believed in the existence of
a God. In 2007 a book outlining his reasons for changing his position, There is
a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind was written by
Flew in collaboration with Roy Abraham Varghese.”
4. Antony Flew, God and Philosophy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
1966), 159, 161.
thority be appealing to this, over here,” then that first claim of

ultimate authority wasn’t really his ultimate authority, because
what you use to prove it is your ultimate authority.
When you call something an ultimate authority, in the na-
ture of the case, it must prove itself. When Antony Flew says
you can’t let the Bible be your ultimate authority, you can’t let
the Bible prove itself, what he is telling us is, “On my philo-
sophical outlook, I am not going to let the Bible be ultimate.”
This can only mean that Antony Flew has determined in ad-
vance that God cannot be the ultimate authority.
According to Flew, there must always be an authority in-
dependent of God, something that is more authoritative than
God, in terms of which the authority of God could be accepted.
God’s authority cannot be inescapable, and it cannot be self-val-
idating, according to Flew.
Elsewhere, he says, “The philosopher examining a concept
is not at that time himself employing that concept, however
much he may at other times wish and need to do so.”5 When
we are examining a concept, trying to decide whether it is true,
Flew says, we cannot employ that concept. You can’t employ
something that you’re examining at the same time. That was
his rule.
In many ways, that’s a pretty good rule to follow. But to
say that it’s a universal rule and applies to everything would
make nonsense out of human reasoning. Did Antony Flew
really pretend that, as a philosopher, he adhered strictly and
purely to that general prerequisite—that you may not examine
something while simultaneously employing it, that you cannot
use the authority of the Bible if what you’re examining is the
5. Flew, God and Philosophy, 26.
authority of the Bible? Did he use that principle himself? No,

he didn’t, and he should have known better.
Those who examine and argue about logic—do you think
they have given up the rules of logic when they argue about
logic? Or do they employ the laws of logic while they argue
about logic? Of course, if they aren’t using the laws of logic,
then they’re not arguing at all. They use the laws of logic to ar-
gue about the laws of logic. When it comes down to an ultimate
standard like that, you must use the standard while you’re trying
to examine the standard.
Those who examine and argue about logic—

do you think they have given up the rules of
logic when they argue about logic?
I know people who examine and evaluate the powers and the
reliability of the human eye. Do you think they say, “Since we’re
examining the eye, we can’t use our eyes, but now we can’t see any-
thing”? Of course, they don’t. They use the eye while they examine
the powers and functionality of the eye. You do this, too. If you
have ever gone to a mirror to try to find something in your eye,
you’re using your eye while you’re trying to find what’s in your eye.
The claim that we must automatically exclude the possibil-
ity of Christians examining and arguing about the authority of
God’s revelation while simultaneously employing the authority
of God’s revelation is nothing more than arbitrary prejudice on
Anthony Flew’s part. He allowed this practice when it comes to
logic. He allowed it when it came to eyes. But he said, “No, not
with the Bible.”
Again, I am not asking anyone just to accept the Bible wil-

ly-nilly. I am not saying, “Here’s the Bible’s claim to be the au-
thority, and so now you have to take it as the authority.” No,
I am saying, examine it. Be reasonable. Let’s argue about this.
When someone says, “You can’t make your ultimate authority
the Bible,” I say, “Yes, I can, and I can do it just as much as you
can make logic your ultimate authority and still try to be logical.”
You see, Antony Flew didn’t want God’s Word to be self-val-
idating. What is remarkable about his—or any other unbeliev-
er’s—refusal to submit in faith to God’s authority based on that
authority is that he only discloses that he is committed in ad-
vance against the Christian position. In the nature of the case,
God’s Word must be self-validating. What else could validate
the Word of God except the Word from God? But if it takes a
word from God to validate the Word of God, then when all is
said and done you must have the Bible validating itself.
THE INTERNAL LOGIC OF A SYSTEM
That is the internal logical of a position. Imagine that someone

says, “I see. If there is a God and He reveals Himself, it would
be his Word that tells us what His revelation is. That means that
His Word must validate His Word. I understand that, but I
don’t like that possibility. I am ruling that out in advance. There
cannot be a God that speaks with such authority.”
Does that sound like a faith commitment to you? “I will
not allow the possibility that there is such a God.” The funny
thing is, usually without showing it openly, unbelievers have
this wild, arbitrary, volitional commitment that is thought out
so badly that it does the very thing they accuse Christians of
doing. They are the ones who say, “No, I won’t consider the
possibility of that.” And now who really has the faith position?
When I debated the atheist Dr. Gordon Stein at the University
of California, Irvine, in 1985,6 one of the things I said to him
was, “That’s the problem with the atheist position: it takes so
much faith to believe it.”
That is the point we must understand. When you repre-
sent faith in this way, many people don’t understand what that
means. Many people will accuse you of being irrational. It’s im-
portant that you know what faith really is and how it is to be
defended. It is especially important that you know you are not
operating from a position of faith in contrast to other people
who operate on the position of reason. Rather, you hold to a
faith that will save reason and make it reasonable to use reason,
whereas the unbeliever does not have a basis to account for rea-
son and its consistent reliability.
GLOSSARY
Autonomous Thinking: To think autonomously (Greek: auto

(self) + nomos (law) = a law unto one’s self) means that the
individual is “subject only to his own criteria of truth, free to
ignore those of God.”7 J. I. Packer writes the following: “Man
was not created autonomous, that is, free to be a law to himself,
but theonomous, that is, bound to keep the law of his Maker.”8
6. The debate has become known as “The Great Debate: Does God Exist? Dr.
Greg L. Bahnsen vs. Dr. Gordon Stein” (1985). The transcript of the debate is
found at http://bit.ly/3aP3Uo9. The audio is at http://bit.ly/2wQV4I1
7. John M. Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief (Philipsburg,
NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 2015), 48.
8. J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Carol
Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, [1993] 2001), 91.
Begging the Question: A logical fallacy that assumes the an-

swer that needs to be proved. It is also known as circular
reasoning or a circular argument. In ultimate questions, cir-
cular arguments are necessary. For example, the use of reason
is used to prove the reality of reason. Logic must be used to
prove the constancy of logic. “All worldviews ultimately rely
on ‘circular’ reasoning for ultimate questions.”9
Cogito, ergo sum: Latin for, “I think, therefore I am.”
Dubito, ergo sum: Latin for, “I doubt, and therefore I must
exist in order to do the doubting.”
The Enlightenment: “The title given to the development of
thought in Europe and America in the late 17th and 18th
centuries. Essentially, the Enlightenment was the expres-
sion of modern man’s attempt to break free from the rule
of dogma based on divine revelation and to exercise his own
reason with complete autonomy.”10
Laws of Logic: More than a set of abstract rules for thinking
straight. The rules and reliability of logic are an extension of
God’s nature. What’s true of logic is true of everything. Jo-
hannes Kepler used the phrase “thinking God’s thoughts af-
ter Him.” There is an ethical dimension to logic that’s found
in the Ninth Commandment: “You shall not bear false wit-
ness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). Logic is about tell-
ing the truth.
9. Joel McDurmon, Biblical Logic in Theory and Practice (Powder Springs,

GA: American Vision Press, 2009), 150.
10. Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, 3rd ed. (Greenville, SC:
Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 146.
1. People today who say that they reject faith and only believe
what they can prove are followers of Descartes, even if they
have never heard of him. How so?
2. Is it possible to doubt everything? Why or why not?
3. Why is “we are not to make assumptions in our reasoning”
a foolish statement?
4. What is Julian Huxley’s reason for not having faith in
Christianity?
5. “Christians hold to a faith that will save reason and make it
reasonable to use reason, but the unbeliever does not.” Why
is this true?
6. “The war is not between reason and faith; it is between faith
and faith.” Discuss.
CHAPTER 3
FOUNDATIONAL
FAITH
Changing people’s worldviews can sometimes bring about in-

teresting results. We’re focusing on apologetics and how to de-
fend the Christian faith. But something else that I have written
about and spoken on is the Christian approach to personal and
socio-political ethics. And these things are connected.
I may talk about culture, society, and constitutional law;
about evolution; about philosophy. We believe that all these
disciplines go together. In fact, the better they fit together, the
more consistency there is among them—that is to say, the better
we have grasped the Christian worldview revealed to us by God
in Scripture.
We also believe that our cultures are going to be reformed
by the Word of God. When we take Christianity into another
culture, we sometimes see monumental changes come about.
Suppose you were an archaeologist and came across an um-
brella buried in the ground somewhere and suppose you had
43
never seen an umbrella before. Could you study this artifact and
come up with the conclusion that it’s an umbrella, maybe even
a primitive umbrella? No, because you cannot evaluate things
without assumptions and presuppositions. If you start with the
wrong presuppositions, you’re going to come up with the wrong
conclusions.
In the previous chapters, we looked at the concept of faith.
Christian faith, we saw, is not some kind of mindless leap,
an emotional experience or delusional commitment contrary
to good reason, contrary to the facts, or contrary to logic. As
Christians, we don’t turn off our brains when we start exercising
our religious commitments or when we witness to people. We
don’t live in two worlds, the world of reason when we go to
school or work and the world of faith when we become religious
on Sundays. Faith is not contrary to reason. Rather, as we’ll see
now, faith is the foundation for reason.
T H E I M P O R TA N C E O F FA C T S
Think of the “faith” known as evolution, from how the cosmos

came into existence, how inorganic material became organic,
to the unguided incremental changes in species over time that
become us and everything else. People hold tenaciously to the
theory of evolution which is, to be honest, asinine. That’s a
strong way of speaking, but sometimes we need the little boy
who stands on the side of the parade and says, “Pardon me, but
isn’t the king naked?” That’s what you must be willing to do as
a Christian when you are confronted with contrary worldviews
and their underlying presuppositions. The following line of ar-
gument should prove helpful:
Foundational Faith 45
All argumentation about ultimate issues eventually comes to rest

at the level of the disputant’s presuppositions. If a man has come
to the conclusion, and is committed to the truth of a certain view
P, when he is challenged as to P, he will offer supporting argumen-
tation for it, Q and R. But of course, as his opponent will be quick
to point out, this simply shifts the argument to Q and R. Why
accept them? The proponent of P is now called upon to offer S, T,
U, and V as arguments for Q and R. And on and on the process
goes. The process is complicated by the fact that both the believer
and unbeliever will be involved in such chains of argumentation.
But all argument chains must come to an end somewhere. One’s
conclusions could never be demonstrated if they were dependent
upon an infinite regress of argumentative justifications, for under
those circumstances the demonstration could never be completed.
And an incomplete demonstration demonstrates nothing at all.
Eventually all argumentation terminates in some logically
primitive starting point, a view or premise held as unquestion-
able. Apologetics traces back to such ultimate starting points or
presuppositions. In the nature of the case these presuppositions
are held to be self-evidencing: they are the ultimate authority of
one’s viewpoint, an authority for which no greater authoriza-
tion can be given.1
You’re going to hear all sorts of claims for worldview certainty,

and people won’t even be honest enough to say to you, “This is one
way of looking at it and there are lots of problems with this theory
and we’re working on those problems. We think we’re going to get
them solved.” They won’t tell you that they have problems.
1. Greg L. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith (Texar-
kana, AR: Covenant Media Foundation, 1996), 71–72.
Instead, they put on a parade, while you’re thinking, “Isn’t

this theory walking around in its underwear—or worse? You
expect me to believe this? You want me to believe that inorganic
material spontaneously became organic, that life came from
non-life? I’m sorry, but if you want me to take that on faith,
then you’re really asking me to do what you claim Christians do
all the time. You say Christians go to Sunday School and hear
little stories about miracles and say, ‘We believe this. It makes
us feel so good.’” You need to have the guts to think for yourself
and say, “Excuse me. I think that isn’t right.”
We not only have to understand what faith really is and who
really exercises mindless “faith,” but we also must understand
something about facts—and that’s what we want to talk about
now. We shouldn’t pit facts against philosophy, as if philosophy
says that facts aren’t important. The facts are important.
We must study the facts, but we also much not

be misled. We must understand the real place
facts have in the makeup of a worldview.
If you decide to go to college to become a biologist or nat-

ural scientist and study the natural world so that we can see
the support it gives to the Scriptures, God bless you. We need
people like that. We need people who can argue the facts. As
long as the unbelieving world gets away with saying, “Those
Christians just have their Sunday School faith,” then people will
not be willing to listen to us when we get down to what’s really
at stake—and that is the philosophical worldview that underlies
your approach to the facts. We must study the facts, but we also
much not be misled. We must understand the real place facts

have in the makeup of a worldview.
Think of the place facts have when it comes to theorizing
about the origin of the universe or the origin of life or the origin
of man himself. Have the facts—or the lack thereof—stopped
evolutionists from promoting their point of view? No.
FA C T S A R E O F T E N I N D I S P U T E
But do you think that’s because they sit around saying, “Let’s
lie to people”? Maybe sometimes, I guess. The evil in the heart
of man doesn’t preclude that as a possibility. But I don’t know
that. I have never overheard evolutionists plotting explicitly and
self-consciously to lie to people. The tragic thing is that they
believe this stuff. They think it’s right. They think the facts sup-
port them.
Here are some facts relating to the age of the universe. In his
book, The Encyclopedia of Practical Christianity, Robert Morey
quotes a scientist regarding issues related to the dating of the
earth:
The age of our globe is presently thought to be some four-

and-a-half billion years, based on the radio decay rates of ura-
nium and thorium. Such “confirmation” may be short-lived, as
nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in
recent years the horrible realization that radio decay rates are
not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to
environmental influences.
And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during
some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic
to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather within

the age and memory of man.2
Here’s someone who has the honesty to say, “The clocks

that we’re using to date the universe may not be that reliable.”
Well, what reliable clocks do we have? Let me give a few more
illustrations.
It takes about a thousand years to produce one inch of top-
soil by the forces of erosion, such as wind and rain. Now if the
earth is billions of years old and the process by which topsoil
is created has been functioning all that time, there should be a
thick layer of topsoil on earth’s crust. But the average depth of
topsoil around the world is six to nine inches. How can that be
if the earth has been here for billions of years?
You present these facts to an evolutionist and you say,
“There’s just not enough time on planet earth for all these
weird, unlikely, random events to take place so that life can
develop.” He says, “That’s just your Sunday School faith.” And
you say, “No, the topsoil is six to nine inches deep around the
world, when there should be miles of topsoil after billions of
years.”
Now, do you think at that point the scientist says, “Oh, oh!
Conflicting evidence. I must give up my theory. Forget evolu-
tion!” No. He very calmly comes up with what we could call a
rescuing device. He wants to rescue his theory, and so comes up
with a device for dealing with a fact that seems contrary to his
theory. He’ll say something like this: “All that topsoil that you’re
talking about is washing into the ocean.”
2. Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC, “Secular Catastrophism,” Industrial Research

and Development (June 1982), 21.
But if the earth is billions of years old and the erosion rate
has been steady, and it’s been going on to such a degree that
only six to nine inches of topsoil are left, then the bottom of the
oceans should be miles deep in loose soil, shouldn’t it? But the
sediment on the ocean floor has been found to be, at its thick-
est, half a mile. The depth could fit with thousands of years of
soil washing into the ocean, not billions of years.
The same sort of thing is true of moon dust. When they
first sent astronauts to the moon, they were convinced by their
evolutionary assumptions that there would be so much cosmic
filtering dust that the spacecraft might actually sink into the
dust and maybe not be able to get up off the surface of the
moon again. But when the astronauts went down the ladder,
they didn’t sink that far in. They had huge shoes and so forth.
They had developed ways to save them in case it was a problem.
But it wasn’t. It turned out that there was a fourth of an inch of
dust on the surface of the moon, rather than feet or miles.
FA C T S D O N ’ T U S U A L LY
R E S O LV E C O N F L I C T S
But here’s the point.3 When we bring out these scientific facts,
do people say, “That’s it! There goes my theory. I’ve got to give
it up”? No. Instead, they move from one rescuing device to an-
other. But they will also start doing things we don’t consider
legitimate in scholarly circles. They’ll start intimidating. They
3. The debate over moon dust has gone on for many years. Dr. Bahnsen’s
point is that scientific theories like the accumulation of moon dust is open to
discovery and analysis. For a detailed study of the topic, see Dr. Andrew A. Snel-
ling and David Rush, “Moon Dust and the Age of the Solar System,” Journal of
Creation 7, No. 1 (April 1993), 2-42.
will pretend they know more than you. They will say that they
have read the footnotes and you haven’t, which is shorthand for
saying that they have done a lot more research than you have.
They will say, “When you get into this scientific field and know
more about it, you won’t ask silly, naive questions like that.”
And then, as they go home afterwards, they think, “I got away
with that one!”
Sometimes they will even grade you down because you have
what used to be called an “open mind” and you ask good, criti-
cal questions. Professors who ask questions and challenge pop-
ular theories may keep their positions because they have tenure,
but they may lose their funding for research.
In my own experience, I was a Philosophy Ph.D. candidate
at University of Southern California (USC) and observed an
intramural fight between unbelievers, who, by the way, don’t get
along well with each other because they don’t like competing
schools of thought. It was well known that there was a tenured
professor at USC for whom most of the other faculty had no
use. When they couldn’t get rid of him in the usual ways, they
started assigning him 7:30 AM classes with freshmen, which is
the kind of thing graduate students are usually assigned to do.
They wanted to discourage him, to insult him, to do whatever
it took so that he would look for a job elsewhere.
I knew the man. He was very competent in his field. I could
understand why people wanted to get rid of him even though
he knew his material. You might think that if that was the
case—if he knew the facts and had mastered his field—then
personalities and politics wouldn’t be an issue. Can you imagine
a person losing his professorial standing or being persecuted be-
cause people don’t like what he’s teaching? How Un-American!
How nonacademic! It happens all the time. It happens espe-

cially when you hold not just to a contrary school of thought
but to a religious school of thought that is disdained.
The facts do not determine what people will believe. That
is not a very flattering thing to say and it may require revising
your view of human nature, but I am convinced that it is true.
Let me give you another illustration, once more not in the
religious domain. I don’t like film-maker Oliver Stone, nor do I
like his point of view on several issues, but I was very pleased
with what he did in his 1991 film JFK. The film was challenging
to people. I know that he put together imaginary reconstruc-
tions with film clips that weren’t always factual. I know that he
sometimes overdid it in his disdain for the Vietnam War and
tried to present that in a way that doesn’t seem balanced or ac-
curate to those of us who lived through the period.
People do not believe things because the facts

demand that they believe them. Facts don’t
usually resolve conflicts.
I realize the kind of man Stone is, but I am also grateful for
this film. That is because he presented, even in an overdrawn
way, the difficulty with the Warren Commission report and its
reconstruction of how President John F. Kennedy was assassi-
nated. There are many people in our country who realize that it
isn’t such a cut and dried thing to have some group of people get
together, look at the facts, boil them down, summarize them,
and then hand them to us on a platter and have the facts speak
for themselves.
It doesn’t happen that way.

That movie, however, and the way it caused people to think,
is a fantastic illustration of something I want to get across in my
teaching of philosophy. People do not believe things because the
facts demand that they believe them. Facts don’t usually resolve
conflicts.
CHANGING WORLDVIEWS
D O E S N O T H A P P E N E A S I LY
When the facts do resolve conflicts, you’ll notice that the con-
flict is always a small or limited controversy that doesn’t have a
lot of implications and doesn’t require that people change their
lives or their way of seeing things. You and I may have a dis-
agreement about how much it costs to get a Whopper at the
local Burger King. But we could walk down to Burger King and
look at the sign and see what it costs, and you would see that I
was right all along.
That’s an example of a disagreement that is resolved by an
inspection of the facts. But what were we arguing over? Some-
thing of earthshaking importance or great philosophical signifi-
cance where worldviews are at stake? Would my life be ruined if
I was wrong about the price of a Whopper? I may act like that. I
may argue and get emotional and overdo it. But it doesn’t have
an impact on my overall belief system and worldview.
That’s because we agree on almost everything else, on what
the nature of life is and how good Whoppers may or may not
be. We just disagree about something internal to our way of
looking at the world. Since that’s the nature of the disagree-
ment, it’s low level, not highly emotional, not greatly significant
and life-changing, and so we can go and look at the facts and,

for the most part, resolve things that way.
But what if we’re talking about the nature of life itself? About
whether we’re going to answer to a holy God someday? About
whether this universe is eternal or was created by God? About
the deity of Christ? About whether homosexuality is an alter-
native lifestyle? And so on. Things like that aren’t like the price
of a Whopper at Burger King. There are high level emotional
stakes here because, depending on the answers, people will have
to change their lives and maybe their professions. They’re going
to have to see the world differently.
And when it comes to those sorts of things, the facts don’t
always move people. You might think they should. Okay, they
should. But in the real world, they don’t. Even in a case like
“Who killed JFK?,” they don’t. Some people—either out of ad-
ulation for the President or hatred of the administration or, in
Oliver Stone’s case, obsession with the Vietnam War—find it
impossible to look at all the documents and the evidence and
come to a common conclusion.
Facts don’t speak for themselves. The way in

which you see the facts—in fact, what you take
to be a fact—is determined by your underlying
assumptions.
Why can’t they? Because the facts don’t speak for themselves.
The way in which you see the facts—in fact, what you take to be
a fact—is determined by your underlying assumptions. You will
never become a good debater if you don’t realize that. People
are not swayed by the facts, though their initial assumptions or

their changed minds can be reinforced by the facts. You put a
fact on the table, and it doesn’t change underlying philosophical
commitments.
M I R A C L E S D O N ’ T A LW AY S
CHANGE PEOPLE’S MINDS
How about miracles? Miracles change people’s minds, don’t

they?
But consider the book of Exodus. God did a series of mir-
acles in Egypt. He sent plagues to the Egyptians. The early
plagues were well-placed philosophical attacks upon the Egyp-
tians’ gods and the way they looked at life. In the last plague,
the firstborn died on a particular night, all the firstborn sons ex-
cept those who happened to do a seemingly superstitious little
thing of putting the blood of a lamb on their doorposts.
What would you think if you were an Israelite and saw that
happen? It wasn’t an indiscriminate plague that killed people of
all ages or even all the children. God sent the angel of death and
killed, specifically, the oldest sons—all at one time—and spared
the Israelites. It was an amazing miracle.
The Israelites knew what God could do. They had not only
seen the previous plagues; they also saw this grand miracle. And
the Egyptians finally said, “Get out of here! We don’t want you
here. You’re a blight on our society.” The Israelites said, “Thank
you. Would you give us your jewelry? We’re out of here.” And
they take off.
But then they get to the Red Sea and can’t get across to en-
ter the Promised Land. Worse, Pharaoh and the Egyptians have
changed their minds. Pharaoh has sent out his chariots and his
horsemen and his best soldiers, and they’re pursuing the Israelites.
Now, do miracles change people’s minds? You would think
the Israelites would say, “If God could send something like a
magic bullet into Egypt and kill the firstborn and spare our
children, God controls the entire universe. Who cares that the
Egyptians are pursuing us? No problem!”
Instead, they railed against Moses. “What a good job you did,
Moses. You brought us out here to die. We can’t get across the
sea, we’re boxed in, and here comes the army to slaughter us.”
Did the facts—even the miraculous facts—change their
worldview, change their hearts, change their way of doing things
and their way of thinking? Not at all.
Did the facts—even the miraculous facts—

change the worldview of the Egyptians,
change their hearts, change their way of
doing things and their way of thinking?
God was gracious. He gave Moses the instructions for part-

ing the Red Sea. Was that a miracle or what? People sometimes
say the Red Sea was at low ebb and the wind blew all night and
the water was low so the people could get across. But when Pha-
raoh and his army pursued them and God brought the walls of
water on them, they drowned. I don’t know many armies that
would drown in three inches of water.
God opened the sea, with walls of water on either side. And
they didn’t walk across on muddy soil; they walked across on
dry ground (Ex. 14:29). I can imagine the Israelite children
walking through, looking at the fish in the water on either side,

as if it was Sea World. And then—it’s just the randomness of the
universe, of course—the sea comes upon Pharaoh as he thinks
he can take the same route.
Now, you’re an Israelite. You’re on the other side of the Red
Sea. You’ve seen God kill the firstborn. You’ve seen Him kill
Pharaoh and his armies in the Red Sea—two grand miracles,
not to mention the warm-up miracles, the plagues, ahead of
that time. You’ve seen miracle upon miracle, and you know now
that God is in control of all things. He will take care of you. You
can trust Him.
Isn’t that what we read in our Bibles? No. The next time
the Israelites had a problem, they complained against Moses
again. In fact, by the time we get to Exodus 17, Moses has been
challenged three more times and now they’re ready to kill him.
Moses complains to God: “They’re about ready to kill me, God.
What shall I do with these people?”
We could go further, but my point is to illustrate for you that
miracles do not change people’s philosophies. Facts don’t do it.
“STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN

IN THE UNIVERSE”
Let’s imagine that I’m talking to a naturalist, the physicist who

doesn’t believe in God and doesn’t believe in miracles. I start
hammering at him with evidence for the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. There is considerable historical evidence for it. It’s very
comforting to me. It reaffirms my faith, and I’m glad that evi-
dence is there. But I keep throwing these facts at this natural-
ist, asking him, “What do you do with that?” Finally, he says,
“Okay, okay. I don’t know what to make of it. Historically, it

does look as if you’ve got to grant that this man, Jesus of Naza-
reth, came back to life.”
Now I think, “Okay, I’ve got him, finally. Now he’s going
to have to become a Christian. Now he’s going to change his
lifestyle. Now he’s going to own up to the sovereignty of heaven
and bow the knee to the Lord.”
What he says next is this: “Strange things happen in this uni-
verse. One of these days, we’ll be able to explain it.” I threw the
facts at him again and again, but he did not change his under-
lying philosophy. Every time he got one of those facts, he just
threw it over his shoulder into what was, for him, a bottomless
pit for facts that don’t fit with his presuppositions.
He might say, “Send it to Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Strange
things happen. A dead man rises! We have TV shows that spe-
cialize in that kind of thing. Where’s the National Enquirer
when you need it?”
Is that the right way to respond to the resurrection of Jesus
Christ? No. It’s not just wrong; it’s dead wrong, spiritually dead
wrong. But because the unbeliever is spiritually dead, he is not
going to see the facts for what they are.
Most people will not get that far if you just throw the facts
at them. Most people will not even accept that a fact is a fact.
Their philosophy says, “No, that can’t be. That doesn’t fit into
my worldview, so it can’t be a fact.” They’ll bat it down. Even
when you throw the best evidence you’ve got for the resurrec-
tion of Jesus at them, they can take it and say, “Big deal.” The
reason for that is that they haven’t changed their philosophy.
They haven’t changed their mental outlook or, to put it in fan-
cier terms, they haven’t changed their presuppositions.
They see the world in a particular way, and all you’ve given
them is more grist for their mills to interpret the world in that
way. You throw miracles at them. And they try to give you a
naturalistic explanation of the miracle.
They see the world in a naturalistic light. You

throw miracles at them. And they try to give
you a naturalistic explanation of the miracle.
You might think, “But they shouldn’t do that!” But when

people will not accept the evidence for what you say it is—even
when you’re right—and when they will not accept that evidence
as proving what you think it proves, they are well within their
intellectual rights not to do so.
I’m not saying that they are within their spiritual rights, nor
am I saying that they are right. I am saying that they are within
their intellectual rights given their naturalistic assumptions. If
you do nothing more than give them more grist for their mills,
and then they use the mills on that grist, you can’t blame them
for that. If you can’t challenge their philosophy of life, why
should they think their philosophy of life has been challenged?
After all, their philosophy of life can accommodate the facts just
as your philosophy of life can seemingly accommodate the facts.
As Christians, we believe—and I am sure that we are right—
that people must work overtime to miss the significance of the
facts and what they tell us about God and about the truth of the
Bible. They must work very hard. But within their philosophi-
cal system, they are intellectually within their rights to treat the
facts you present to them the way they do. We need to do some-
thing more than present the facts. We need to go after the phi-
losophy by which people accept and interpret facts.
We need to do something more than present

the facts. We need to go after the philosophy
by which people accept and interpret facts.
That might sound discouraging, but there is good news. You

might think that if you’re going to confront an unbeliever, you
must know a lot of facts. You might be intimidated, for in-
stance, by how much you’d have to learn to argue about evolu-
tion. Some of you can do that. Most of you should do at least
some of it. But when all is said and done, it’s not just the facts
that will make the difference. There is a method of reasoning
by which, with just a little bit of ammunition, you can take on
all comers, a method of reasoning that will allow you to put
whatever facts you do have to good use in defending the faith.
GLOSSARY
Naturalism: Is also known as “atheism, scientific materialism,

and secular humanism. . . . The most fundamental belief
from which all others flow is that nature or matter is all that
exists. It has always existed, or it came into existence from
nothing. There is nothing outside or before nature, i.e., the
material universe that is studied by modern science. There is
no God and no supernatural.”4
4. Terry Mortenson, “The Religion of Natrualism,” Answers in Genesis (May

5, 2017): https://bit.ly/2UrBDxD
Political ethics: (also known as political morality or public eth-

ics) is the practice of making moral judgments about polit-
ical issues and political agents from operating worldviews.
The Bible has a great deal to say about political or civil ethics.
Presupposition: “A ‘presupposition’ is not just any assumption
in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at the
most basic level of one’s network of beliefs. Presuppositions
form a wide-ranging, foundational perspective (or starting
point) in terms of which everything else is interpreted and
evaluated. As such, presuppositions have the greatest author-
ity in one’s thinking, being treated as one’s least negotiable
beliefs and being granted the highest immunity to revision.”5
Worldview: A worldview is a network of presuppositions that
are not tested by natural science, in terms of which all experi-
ence is related and interpreted that includes presuppositions
about the nature of God and man, the world, how we know
what we know, and how we’re supposed to live our lives.
1. Why is faith the foundation for reason—even for the “faith”

of evolution?
2. The facts do not determine what people will believe. Why?
3. Why don’t facts speak for themselves?
4. Do miracles change worldviews? Discuss.
5. When we present the Resurrection of Jesus Christ to an un-
believer, why must we go after the philosophy by which peo-
ple accept and interpret the facts?
5. Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg,

NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1998), 2, note 4.
6. How do unbelievers often deal with and dismiss evidences

that Christians present as validation for the Christian
worldview?
7. What does it mean to say that an unbeliever may be within
his intellectual rights when arguing about evidences related
to the Christian faith?
CHAPTER 4
REASONING AS
A CHRISTIAN
SHOULD REASON
In the previous chapters, we have been talking about the way

underlying convictions control the way you interpret the eye-
ball facts you see in your life. Many of you will know this story,
but I will remind you of it.
There’s a man who believes he’s dead. He has a strange psy-

chological condition and is convinced that he is a walking dead
man. He goes to a psychiatrist who tries to work with him and
lead him out of this conundrum and show him that he isn’t
dead. Nothing works.
Finally, the psychiatrist gets frustrated. He decides to be
scientific with the man.
He says, “Now listen to me, Bill. Do dead men have blood
going through their bodies?”
63
“No.”
“So, if you cut a dead man, would he bleed?”
“No.”
The psychiatrist takes his hand and uses a pin and pricks
Bill’s finger and blood spurts out. The psychiatrist says, “See,
Bill. The facts prove it. You’re not dead.”
The patient looks at his finger for a minute and says, “Lo
and behold! Dead men do bleed!”
When you put a fact out there, the way in which a person
is going to respond to it depends upon his underlying assump-
tions. In this case, the patient had two convictions. One was that
he was dead. The other was that dead men don’t bleed. But when
presented with counter-evidence, you can’t tell from a philo-
sophical standpoint which of those two beliefs he will give up.
No one holds a belief by itself in a vacuum. All our beliefs are
held in tandem, if I can put it that way. You cannot believe one
thing without believing something else in addition to it. It is
impossible to examine beliefs singularly. We may not always put
together the beliefs that are being tested by our experiments,
but we are always testing groups of beliefs.
You cannot believe one thing without believing

something else in addition to it. It is impossible
to examine beliefs singularly.
In this case, the patient had this grouping of beliefs: At the

deepest level, he thought he was dead. At a little higher level, he
thought dead men don’t bleed. Then when he was shown that
Reasoning as a Christian Should Reason 65
he did bleed, he gave up the higher level of belief and retained

his deeper conviction that he was dead. It’s a simple procedure.
We make a joke out of it, but it’s profound for you as you de-
fend the faith.
DETERMINING A PERSON’S
F U N D A M E N TA L C O N V I C T I O N S
You need to understand that unless people change their most

fundamental convictions about the nature of reality—how we
know what we know and how we should live our lives—and
unless they change their underlying convictions about God and
man and the relationship between them, then they will deal
with the facts the same way the psychiatric patient dealt with
the fact of his bleeding. They will continue to think that there is
no God and come up with rescuing devices for that conviction
by changing other beliefs instead.
The most important thing you can do, therefore, in defending
the faith as a Christian is to learn to reason as a Christian should
reason. It isn’t so important that you amass an encyclopedia’s worth
of evidence, although you should have some. That isn’t the crucial
point. The crucial point is to learn how to think as a Christian.
Let me illustrate that from my own life. I don’t say this be-
cause I want commendation, but there was a point when I de-
cided I wanted to specialize in apologetics, the defense of the
Christian faith. At that time, I thought, “Well, then, there’s all
this stuff—especially about false religions and cults—that I’ve
got to learn about.”
I do think you need to learn about those things. I’m not
saying you can do apologetics with no information at all. But
there are books and books and books on these subjects. And
you would be appalled to learn how many variations and how
many different little cults and religions there are.
I was thinking, “How am I going to master all of this ma-
terial?” But I didn’t have to master all that material. I had to
master the fundamental issues of religious philosophy. I hope,
by God’s grace, that I did that or that I came close. The result
was that I didn’t worry about anybody I ran into who wanted to
talk about religion.
No matter what kind of subdivision of a subdivision of what-
ever bizarre little cult a person might belong to, it makes no
difference. The questions are the same, and the problems with
non-Christian answers are the same. It saves a lot of time to get
down to the basics. You don’t have to master all the high-level
details of what everybody out there believes, because you can talk
to just about anybody if you know the right questions to ask, and
you know what to push on regarding their operating assumptions.
This is a variation of the method of defending the faith
known as giving the unbeliever enough rope to hang himself. If
you know how to ask the right questions, and you know what
issues to push on, you’ll be able to deal with any worldview, any
underlying philosophy that comes along.
If you want to develop a Christian worldview that allows you
to defend the faith in this way, here are some pointers.
BE SELF-CONSCIOUS ABOUT
YO U R O W N P R E S U P P O S I T I O N S
First, you need to be self-conscious about your own presupposi-

tions. In Proverbs 1:7, the writer of tells us that “the fear of the
Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom

and instruction.” You need to be aware that, as a Christian, you
have a distinctive approach to how people should reason, how
they should draw their conclusions.
You should know something about the underlying theologi-
cal convictions that make you a Christian. What do you believe
about God, the creation of the world, the relationship of God to
the world, how He saves people from their sins, how we know
what we know about God, and how He calls upon us to live?
You need to be self-conscious about these questions. It will do
no good to have some type of general label: “I’m a Christian.”
You must know what the substance of that is. What is essential
to be a Christian? What does the Bible say about these things?
NEUTRALITY IS IMPOSSIBLE
You must realize that neutrality is not a possibility for you. It

is impossible for you to set aside your Christian convictions
and enter into a discussion with someone—a professor, a room-
mate, whoever it may be—by saying, “Let’s all be neutral about
this. Let’s all pretend we don’t have any presuppositions.” You
can’t carry on a conversation pretending that something isn’t so
when it is and then be able to predict where the conversation is
going to go. Here’s the worst part of it: When you pretend you
don’t have presuppositions, and you let the unbeliever pretend
you don’t have presuppositions, guess whose presuppositions
you’re going to be using—the unbeliever’s.
The unbeliever is not going to say, accidentally, “Well, I
guess I’ve been assuming all along that Christianity is true and
the Bible is right.” That isn’t going to happen. When the unbe-
liever says, “Let’s just lay aside our convictions and our distinc-
tives and both try to be neutral,” whether he realizes it or not he
is inviting you to lay aside your Christian presuppositions. He
means: “Let’s just be secular about this.”
You can’t carry on a conversation pretending

that something isn’t so when it is and then
be able to predict where the conversation is
going to go.
You must become self-conscious about what your presuppo-

sitions are and realize that being neutral is an impossibility for
everyone, including yourself. In John 17:7, Jesus prayed to our
heavenly Father that we would be set apart by the truth, and
then He declared, “Thy Word is truth.” Jesus wants His people
to be a distinctive people, set apart, unique, consecrated. And
He wants us to be consecrated specifically by the truth. What
makes us different is that the truth has set us free and has made
us a different people.
Think of Jesus’ words again: “Thy Word is truth.” What
makes Christians different when they reason with unbelievers,
when they go into the science lab, when they do literature or
translation, or play basketball, is that everything they think and
do is guided by the Word of God. The fear of the Lord is the
beginning point of wisdom, the beginning point of knowledge.
We have the idea that what we should really do is lay aside
all of our philosophical convictions, all of our presuppositions,
and then we’ll fight the battle over the facts, and at the end of
the reasoning process we’ll bow the knee to God and honor His
authority and His sovereign prerogatives. At the end of the pro-

cess, we’re going to say, “Yes, there is a God. The Bible is true.
I must become a Christian,” but at the end of the process. But
Proverbs tells you that the beginning of knowledge is the fear of
the Lord.
That doesn’t come after you have figured everything out
and have proven to your own satisfaction that the Bible is true.
That’s the starting point of knowledge.
But there are a lot of people who don’t start at that point.
That’s true, and Proverbs deals with them too. It goes on to say,
“And fools despise wisdom and instruction.” If you will not be-
gin with God as your open and operating presupposition—the
living and true God, the God who reveals Himself in the Scrip-
tures—if you do not make that your starting point, then you
end up being a fool and you despise wisdom and instruction.
If you start out with a Christian worldview,

bowing the knee and the heart to the Lord
then you can make sense out of this world.
This is the point I want to drive home: If you start out with
a Christian worldview, bowing the knee and the heart to the
Lord—if you begin with Christian presuppositions, a Christian
perspective—then you can make sense out of this world. But if
you do not start with that, you cannot make sense out of any-
thing. You will end up despising wisdom and instruction.
The book of Proverbs has it right. Your beginning point is
going to determine where you come out at the end. Make the
right choices. Make sure your philosophical foundations are se-
cure. Be self-conscious about your presuppositions. That’s my

first piece of advice.
THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

I S B U I LT O N T H E B I B L E
Second, make sure that what you think as a Christian is gov-

erned and corrected by the Word of God and not by worldly
traditions. In Colossians 2:3–8, the Apostle Paul teaches this
very thing. Paul says about Jesus Christ,
In whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge depos-

ited. This I say, that no one may delude you with persuasiveness
of speech. For though I am absent in the flesh, yet am I with
you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order in the stead-
fastness of your faith in Christ. As therefore you received Christ
Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and
established in your faith, even as you were taught, abounding
in thanksgiving. Take heed lest anyone rob you through his
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the
elementary principles of the world, and not after Christ.
Paul begins in verse 3 by telling us what we saw in Proverbs

1:7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Paul
puts it this way: All the treasures of wisdom and instruction, all
that man can know, is deposited in Christ. If one does not begin
with Jesus Christ and the revelation of Christ, one destroys the
possibility of knowing anything.
I don’t deny that many unbelievers are very smart people.
They often know much more than we do. The man who did
open heart surgery on me, who is an unbeliever, knows a whole
lot more about human anatomy and the functioning of the hu-
man heart than I do. I don’t doubt that for a moment. But what
he knows and what every unbeliever you meet knows is a trea-
sure that Jesus Christ makes possible. When we do not honor the
one in Whom all these truths are deposited, when we do not see
that we must honor the revelation of Christ to make sense out
of what we know, then we’re guilty of robbing from the Lord.
In Christ are deposited all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. Paul says, “This is why I’m telling you this. This I
say in order that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of
speech. I don’t want people to come along and bamboozle you.”
EVERY TRUTH DEPENDS UPON CHRIST
I want you to be aware of the fact that if you are not conscious
that every truth depends upon Christ—or what we’ll call the
Christian worldview, that which Christ reveals to us about
Himself, us, and the world—then people are going to come
along with persuasive speech and easily draw you aside. Your
college professor may be so smart when it comes to calculus and
geology or physics. But he doesn’t know anything that he can
give an account of if he doesn’t have Jesus Christ as part of his
thinking.
Paul says, “I want you to know that, so that you won’t be
deluded with persuasive speech.”
In Colossians 2:8, he writes, “Take heed—beware, be on the
lookout—lest anyone would rob you. Beware lest anyone makes
spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit which is af-
ter the tradition of men, after the elementary principles of the
world, and not after Christ.”
Occasionally, I’ve had people tell me that this verse indicates

that I was in sin for studying philosophy. They were well-mean-
ing, but I think they were very wrong. Is that what Paul says?
Paul doesn’t say, “Don’t study philosophy.” What he says is, “Be-
ware of philosophy.” He doesn’t say “Beware of all philosophy.”
He says, “Beware of a particular kind of philosophy.” Philoso-
phy that he calls “vain deceit, after the traditions of men” and
“after the elementary principles of the world.”
The Greek word “philosophy” means the love (philo) of wis-
dom (sophia). Who is the source of all wisdom? God is. That’s
why the book of Proverbs anchors wisdom in God’s character so
we can know and understand Him, ourselves, and our world.
The Bible emphasizes that we “get wisdom,” because acquiring
wisdom leads to understanding: “Wisdom is the principal thing;
therefore, get wisdom” (Prov. 4:5, 7).
Paul doesn’t say “Don’t study philosophy.”

What he says is “Beware of philosophy.”
The various translations put this in different ways, but I

think “elementary principles” is the best translation. The Greek
word is stoicheia. It’s found elsewhere in the New Testament
(Gal. 4:3, 9; Col. 3:20; 2 Pet. 3:10, 12). In Hebrews 5:12, for
instance, it is used for what amounts to the building blocks of
learning. The stoicheia are the basic principles by which we learn.
Here Paul says, “Be careful that you don’t have a philosophy
that is vain deceit, after the tradition of man and after the build-
ing blocks of learning of the world, the elements or stoicheia of
the world. Watch out, not for all philosophy, but for a particular
kind of philosophy, a philosophy that is vain deception.” It is

vain deception because it does not learn from the revelation of
God and then see all of the world in the light of that.
And it’s “philosophy that’s after the traditions of men.” It’s
hard for a Christian to go into the study of philosophy and
not be pulled over into thinking that he must follow one of
these traditions of men. The pressure to do so is great. You’ll be
told that you can’t bring your Christianity into philosophy. Paul
says, “Watch out. Don’t let those persuasive words delude you.
Don’t be robbed of the knowledge you can have.”
There is a connection between Colossians 3:8 and verse 3.
Verse 3 talks about all the treasures that are yours in Christ.
Verse 8 says “Don’t be robbed of them.” What are the treasures
you might be robbed of? “The treasures of wisdom and knowl-
edge.” Be careful. You can know things based on the revelation
of Jesus Christ, but if you are persuaded by human words and
go after human traditions and follow the elementary principles
of learning of the world, you’ll be robbed.
Paul does not say “Don’t do philosophy.” He says, “Be care-
ful of philosophy that is man-centered.” He doesn’t say all phi-
losophy is bad. He says to be careful of a particular kind of phil-
osophical thinking. But notice the last part of the passage. He
says we should “Take heed lest anyone make spoil of us through
philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men and the
elementary principles of the world, and not after Christ.” He
believes there is a philosophy—the study and love of wisdom—
that is after Christ, and you must be careful that you don’t go
after one of the other ones. He says you must be careful that
your philosophy is after—or according to—Christ, “in whom
all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are deposited.”
It’s very important, then, as you develop your Christian

worldview, that you are self-conscious about what you believe.
Be aware of what your presuppositions are. Also, make sure your
presuppositions are governed by and corrected by the Word of
God, not worldly traditions, not what mere men have to say.
That means you must become a good student of the Bible.
If you do not pay attention to the Word of God, you will not
self-consciously develop a Christian outlook.
R E C O G N I Z E T H E U LT I M AT E
AUTHORITY OF GOD IN EVERYTHING
Third, you need to recognize the ultimate authority of God

in everything you believe and do. That seems like an obvious
point, but very few Christians have thought it through. The
ultimate authority of God is well-expressed by the Apostle Paul
in Romans 3:4. A certain thought was proposed, and Paul says,
“God forbid; yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar.”
Are you prepared, heart and soul, to go along with what
Paul says? He’s saying that if the whole world were to be in
agreement against what God says in his Word, then let God be
true. You need to be prepared to say of the entire world—even
your mother and your father, your boyfriend or your girlfriend,
and all the professors at your university, no matter how presti-
gious—“You are lying if you disagree with what God says.
Nothing takes precedence over the Word of God. Nothing.
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong for you to reconsider your in-
terpretation of the Word of God. As Christians, we grow in
our understanding. We find out that we didn’t quite have it
right previously. But it must be your theoretical commitment
that if the Bible teaches something—and to the degree that

you believe the Bible does teach something—you cannot let
anything get in the way of that commitment. You might have
something that forces you to go back and say, “Did I interpret
it correctly?” But it cannot be the case that, because so many
people out there disagree with you, you say, “Well, then, I guess
the Bible must be wrong.” Remember, “Let God be true, but
every man be a liar.”
Most people take the Gallup poll approach to truth. They
may not self-consciously do so. They may not explicitly tell you
that’s what they’re doing. But they do. The mentality is that we
find out the truth by counting noses: How many people say
this? How many people say that? The majority is always right.
It’s epistemological democracy, that is, democracy in our the-
ory of knowledge.
The ultimate authority of God is something

you must be very self-conscious about if
you’re going to develop a Christian worldview.
I’m not against the social theory of democracy. In a society

where people disagree, the majority must govern, must deter-
mine who rules us, and so forth. That’s fine. But when it comes
to matters of truth, it makes no difference at all what the major-
ity says. Paul says, “You could have the entire world. You could
have 100% of the people in the world saying something con-
trary to God, but let God be true, though every man is a liar.”
The ultimate authority of God is something you must be
very self-conscious about if you’re going to develop a Christian
worldview. You mustn’t let contrary voices get in the way or

adopt the Gallup poll mentality, an epistemological democracy
where the voice of the people is the voice of God. There are
other things that you must not let get in the way. This may
sound funny but hear me out: You must not let the facts get in
the way either.
THE WORD OF PROPHECY MADE SURE
There’s a story about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–

1831) who was a German philosopher who had developed per-
haps the last grand metaphysical scheme for understanding
world history, the nature of reality, and so forth. It would take
too long to describe it here, but it had a place for everything.
Everything fit into Hegel’s view of the way he tried to under-
stand history, in one way or another. I don’t know if the story is
true, but it goes like this: A student once approached Hegel and
said, “Dr. Hegel, the facts don’t fit your theory,” and then gave
some illustrations, to which, it is said, Hegel responded, “Then
the facts be hung.”
That is not what I am saying. I am not saying, “Well, then,
the facts be hung,” as if we’re going to close our eyes to any-
thing. I want you to understand, though, that what you see to
be a fact and how you interpret a fact will be governed by your
presuppositions.
We have some illustrations of that in the New Testament.
We’ll begin with 2 Peter 1:16–19. Peter says, “We did not fol-
low cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were
eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Peter is saying “We saw Jesus and
we saw his glory.” Peter is thinking of his experience on the

Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–13). He says, “We didn’t
make up this stuff. We are not liars or storytellers. We didn’t
follow fables. We told you what we saw as eyewitnesses of Jesus’
majesty and glory.”
And yet look at what Peter says in 2 Peter 2:19: “And we
have the word of prophecy more sure; whereunto ye do well
that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until
the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts.”
Peter says, “I was an eyewitness of the majesty of Christ,”
and then he goes on to say, “But we have the word of prophecy
more sure.” More sure than what? More sure even than my eye-
ball experience. Peter was there. He could appear on the Eyewit-
ness News of the ancient world and tell about Jesus and about
what he saw. And yet he says to us, “The word of prophecy is
more sure even than what I saw with own two eyes.”
Think about Abraham, who is the father of the faithful.
We’re all told to walk in the steps of our father, Abraham. Paul
tells us, for instance, that “he is the father of those who have
faith.” What kind of faith did Abraham have? “(As it is written,
A father of many nations have I made thee) before him whom
he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead, and calls the
things that are not, as though they were. Who in hope believed
against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many
nations, according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy
seed be” (Rom. 4:17–18).
Here’s the background. In the Old Testament, God appeared
to Abraham when he was an old man, when his wife was an old
woman—and on top of that, his wife was barren—and said,
“Abraham, I am going to make you the father of many nations.
In fact, you’re going to have so many children, they will ulti-

mately be like the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky.”
I don’t know why Abraham didn’t just say, “Consider the
facts, God.” But he didn’t. Sarah had a harder time. Apparently,
she was overhearing this, and she laughed, for which reason the
son of promise is now known as Laughter. That’s what Isaac
means in Hebrew: Itzhak, “to laugh.”
Abraham did not challenge God; he believed

him. What Paul says is that “he in hope
believed against hope.”
Abraham did not challenge God; he believed him. What

Paul says is that “he in hope believed against hope.” What a
great expression. What does it mean?
All human expectation—all the hope Abraham would have
gotten if he could have gone to the fertility experts of his day—
would have been against this. Can you imagine Abraham going
to the doctors, one after another, getting a second, third, fourth
opinion, asking “Do you think I can have a baby with my wife?”
The doctors would say, “Come on, Abraham. There’s no way.
You’re not going to have a baby, and even if you could, she can’t.”
It was against all human hope that Abraham, in hope, be-
lieved. Listen to how Paul puts it:
Who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might

become the father of many nations, according to that which
had been spoken, So shall thy seed be.” Abraham listened to
the Word of God against all the hope that the empirical experts
could have given him in that day. Against all human expecta-
tion, when God said it, Abraham said, “He can do it. God can
because he is sovereign. Nothing is too hard for God.
I must tell you a bit more about Abraham because the story
is too good to miss. Even though Abraham was a man of faith,
he did blow it. At first, he thought, “God has told me that this
is the way it is going to be, and He has left it for me to figure
out how it’s going to happen.” He took Hagar, his wife’s hand-
maiden, and had a son through her. But to Abraham’s chagrin,
God said, “Abraham, you have it wrong. I meant Sarah.”
Finally, Sarah does have a son named Isaac, remembering
the laughter of the mother at the thought that God would do
such a thing for her in her old age and in her barrenness. Then,
later, after Isaac had grown to be a young man, God appeared
to Abraham and said, “Abraham, I have something I want you
to do. I want you to prepare for a sacrifice. Have Issac help you.”
They went out to a mountain far away from where he lived.
He prepared the sacrifice. He was willing to make the sacri-
fice. But who was he to sacrifice? His own son! Think about
that. Abraham believed against all hope, according to the Word
of God, that he would be given a son of promise. He finally
got that son, through whom he would have grandchildren and
great-grandchildren and finally be the father of many nations.
Everything rested upon that boy, and God said, “Sacrifice him.”
The Bible commends the faith of Abraham at that point in
his life. The book of Hebrews says that Abraham was willing
to sacrifice his own son, “believing that God could raise the
dead” (Heb. 11:19). Abraham was not a New Testament Chris-
tian. He didn’t know about Lazarus being raised from the dead
and Jesus rising from the dead and so forth. Thousands of years
earlier, Abraham was willing to sacrifice the only son he had,
given to him miraculously by God, because he said, “If so be,
God will raise the dead to fulfill His promise.” That’s faith. It’s
not a faith that ignores the facts. It’s a faith that governs a heart
understanding of the facts.
T H E Y H AV E M O S E S A N D
THE PROPHETS
We find one more illustration in Luke 16:31. This is in the story

Jesus tells about the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man lived a
life of self-indulgence and when he died, he went to Hades and
there he was in great torment. Lazarus—someone he had ig-
nored all his life, a poor man at his gate, who was so bad off that
the dogs licked his wounds—died on the very same day and he
went to Abraham’s bosom, which is a Jewish idiom for heaven.
Jesus tells the story of the rich man in hell and his torment,
seeing Lazarus, knowing what he could have had. He cries out
asking if it would be possible for him to go back and warn his
brothers on earth about this terrible place. Jesus puts into the
mouth of Abraham Jesus’ own words, answering this point of
view. Jesus has Abraham say, “No, they have Moses and the
prophets. If they hear not them, neither will they believe if one
were raised from the dead” (Luke 16:29).
Wait a minute, Jesus! If they had the facts, if they had a mi-
raculous fact, if they had the resurrection facts in front of them,
wouldn’t they believe? Jesus says, “No,” because it begins with
hearing Moses and the prophets. It begins by submitting to the
Word of God. Only in terms of your submission to the Word
of God do the miracles make sense. Only then can they be ac-
cepted and interpreted properly. But if they will not hear Moses
and the prophets, all the rest will make no difference.
Do you think Jesus was exaggerating or overdoing it here?
What happened when Jesus rose from the dead that He might
warn people not to go to hell? The Jews paid the soldiers to lie
about it. Isn’t that amazing? Jesus knew exactly what He was
talking about. The facts don’t determine what people will be-
lieve; their underlying worldview does. It’s their original reli-
gious convictions that make all the difference.
As you develop a Christian worldview, first, you must be
self-conscious about what your presuppositions are. Second,
you must be governed and corrected by the Word of God and
not by human traditions. Third, you must honor the ultimate
authority of God: “Let God be true, but every man a liar.” You
must honor the Word of God, even when the apparent facts
are against it. You must recognize that the word of prophecy is
more sure than even your eyeball experience. That’s how high
the authority of God’s Word is for you.
GOD’S WORD APPLIES TO

EVERY AREA OF LIFE
Fourth, you must understand that in a Christian worldview,

God’s Word applies to every area of life. You cannot have the
idea that Christianity or the Word of God is for some narrow
domain, some slice of life. It is for everything you do, every-
thing you think, everything you say.
Second Corinthians 10:4–5 tells us how we are going to be
effective defenders of the faith. “For the weapons of our warfare
are not of the flesh but are mighty before God for the casting
down of strongholds.” Paul says that we don’t use physical weap-
ons; we have something much better. You may be tempted to
want to use physical weapons, to beat some sense into people.
But Paul says, “No, the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly.
They are not physical weapons. And because of that, they are
mighty before God for casting down strongholds.”
It says in verse 5, “casting down reasonings”—that’s what the
Greek means—“reasonings and every high thing exalted against
the knowledge of God.” How are we going to take any reason-
ing, any high thing exalted against the knowledge of God, and
tear it down? He says, “By bringing every thought into captivity
to the obedience of Christ.”
To develop an effective Christian worldview

that can refute all comers, you must learn
to bring every thought into captivity to the
obedience of Christ. Every thought.
To develop an effective Christian worldview that can refute

all comers, you must learn to bring every thought into captivity
to the obedience of Christ. Every thought. Not just what you
believe about heaven and hell, your sin and salvation. Not just
what you believe about God being the creator. Not just what
you think about prayer and evangelism. You must bring every
thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ in school, if
you participate in a sport or perform with a musical instrument
or work at a job, in your marriage and the raising and educating
of your children. Everything!
You must do it in the voting booth in the choice of candidates

and their policies and when it comes to finances. Everything
that you think must be governed by the Word of God. As we
saw earlier, Proverbs 1:7 says that “the beginning of knowledge
is the fear of the Lord”—not the end of knowledge, after you’ve
done all your reasoning, but at the outset. You must bring every
thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ or you are
going to be robbed of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
You’re going to be left with a worldview that is indefensible.
If every thought is to be brought into captivity to the obe-
dience of Christ, then the effectiveness of your apologetic will
be measured by your ability to see Christ in everything that
you do and say. That’s what you need to work toward, and in
the chapters ahead I will help you do that by explaining what
philosophy is and what kinds of philosophies are out there so
that you know what the opposition looks like and have some
strategies for dealing with it.
GLOSSARY
Apologetics: Does not mean to apologize for being a Christian.

(1) “The application of Scripture to unbelief (including the
unbelief that remains in the Christian). The study of how to
give to inquirers a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter
3:15).”1
Stoicheia: Most often translated as “elements,” the Greek word
refers to the building blocks or fundamental principles of
learning. It does not refer to the elements of the Periodic
Table.
1. Frame, Apologetics, 289–290.
Epistemology: Theory of knowledge. What is the nature and

what are the limits of human knowledge? How do you know
what you know?
Metaphysics: The study of the nature of reality. What lies be-
yond the physical world? What is the nature of the world in
which we live? Where did it come from? What is its struc-
ture? What things are real? Does God exist? Does man have
a soul? Is there a life after death?
1. No one holds a belief by itself, in a vacuum. Explain this

statement.
2. The defense of the Christian faith is called apologetics. Why
is Proverbs 1:7 a good starting place for doing this?
3. Why is it not possible for anyone to be neutral?
4. Beginning with Christian presuppositions will enable you to
make sense of this world. If you don’t do that, you will end
up “despising wisdom and instruction.” Discuss.
5. What’s wrong with the “Gallup poll approach to truth?”
6. Abraham’s faith did not ignore the facts; it was a faith the
gives the heart a true understanding of the facts. Discuss.
7. Second Corinthians 10:4–5 tells us how to be effective de-
fenders of the faith. Explain.
CHAPTER 5
UNBELIEVERS ARE
NOT NEUTRAL
AND CHRISTIANS
SHOULDN’T BE
In the previous chapters, we have considered the nature of faith,

facts, and worldviews. In the last chapter, our focus was on de-
veloping a Christian worldview—self-consciously, biblically,
under the ultimate authority of God, and applying it to ev-
ery area of life. Now we’ll talk about what to do when you en-
counter different worldviews of unbelieving professors, fellow
students, friends, family members, strangers, or the people you
work with.
You have a worldview—an underlying set of presuppositions
about the nature of God and man, the world, how we know
what we know, how we’re supposed to live our lives, and so
on—and by that worldview you evaluate everything else. But
85
you’re entering a discussion with someone who has his own

worldview, with his own underlying presuppositions, his own
way of evaluating facts, his own ideas about how he knows
what he knows and how he’s supposed to live his life. In such a
conversation, we have one worldview in conflict with another
worldview. It’s surely occurred to you that if that’s the case, no
one can make progress. It’s a standoff. Everything you throw at
them, they reinterpret according to their underlying philosophy
and worldview. Everything they throw at you, you reinterpret
according to your own underlying philosophy and worldview.
You might be tempted to conclude that it does no good
to argue. How on earth can we get to the bottom of anything
when we have conflicting presuppositions? It’s not just that we
have a different bank of information; we have a different way of
evaluating that bank of information. You can never make any
progress, then, when you argue.
The temptation when that problem arises—and it’s a temp-
tation that Christians have given in to for hundreds of years that
has an initial plausibility—is to think, “Well, then, everyone
has to be neutral. I’ll put aside my presuppositions and you put
aside your presuppositions, and we’ll just look at things from
scratch, without any prejudices, without any assumptions. We’ll
just be neutral.” Before we talk about how to encounter the un-
believer, we must deal with that question of neutrality.
People you debate with will tell you that you must lay your
religious assumptions aside. You don’t come into a class in col-
lege as a Christian. You just come in as an open-minded student,
willing to learn. Your professors will tell you that you cannot
appeal to the Bible because that begs the question of religious
authority—and besides, in this class we are not committed to
Unbelievers Are Not Neutral 87
any religious authority. They will say that you are required to set
aside your assumptions, your commitments, and so forth, and
come at things neutrally and see where the facts lead you.
There are two propositions about neutrality you need to re-
member when the unbeliever tries to press neutrality on you.
Here they are: (1) They aren’t neutral. (2) And you shouldn’t be.
NO ONE IS NEUTRAL
No one is neutral, not even the person who claims to be neutral.

That’s the first point.
Unbelieving professors, for example, are very capable of intel-
lectual bullying. They will want you to lay aside your weapons,
your defenses,1 your philosophy, and then bully you with their
alleged knowledge of the field, using vocabulary that you’re not
familiar with. They’ll try to bamboozle you, to convince you
that you must follow the authority of the expert—and they’re
the expert in that field. Who are you to come in with some
other point of view?
They are not neutral. The very fact that a professor uses one
textbook rather than another tells you that he or she is not
neutral. The fact that he or she considers certain aspects of the
field and a certain range of evidence relevant—that they look at
some options and screen out other options—tells you they are
guided by some underlying commitments. They are not being
as neutral as they claim to be.
Imagine what it would be like to study the American colonies
from an entirely neutral point of view. We want to know what
1. See Gary DeMar, Thinking Straight in a Crooked World (Powder Springs,

GA: American Vision, 2001), 1–8.
it was like in Colonial America. Since we are completely neu-

tral, we don’t have any idea of what’s important and what’s not
important, what causes this and what causes that. We have no
notion of responsibility. We have no moral evaluation. Should
we study how straw was used in making brooms or what the
price of eggs was, or the games children played or perhaps the
influence of Chinese food on the American colonies?
You might say, “My class didn’t cover any of those things.”
Why didn’t they? Because somebody—either the person who
wrote the textbook or the professor who was lecturing—de-
cided they weren’t as important as other topics.
Choices must be made, and you can’t make

choices without some standard.
Choices must be made, and you can’t make choices without

some standard. When you apply that standard, you are indicat-
ing that you don’t have a completely open-minded approach to
the subject. You are discriminating. You are deciding that one
thing is good or bad, more important or less important.
The Bible warns us that unbelievers cannot be neutral. They
have a different mindset from the Christian. Notice what Paul
says in Ephesians 4 about the difference between believers and
unbelievers. It’s not just that one group of people refuses to do
drugs and engage in extramarital sexual activity. Paul says that
the difference between believers and unbelievers has something
to do with the way they think and reason.
Paul says, “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that
you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk” (Eph. 4:17). How
did the Gentiles walk? How do unbelievers live in the world?

What’s their lifestyle? Paul says it is “in the vanity of their mind,
being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life
of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the
hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves
up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
But you did not so learn Christ” (Eph. 4:17–20).
B Y W H AT S TA N D A R D ?
Paul does talk about the wicked lifestyle of unbelievers, but

where does he begin? He piles up the expressions: “vanity of
their mind, darkened in their understanding.” Paul repeatedly
presses the fact that they don’t think properly. They don’t have
the right mind or mental process. It comes down to a funda-
mental question: By what standard?
The unbeliever who professes to be neutral is

fooling himself, if not lying outright.
The Bible says the unbeliever is not neutral. The unbeliever

who professes to be neutral is fooling himself, if not lying out-
right. It is possible that he really thinks he is being neutral in
evaluating the facts and using his reasoning ability, because he
thinks his underlying philosophy is what everyone believes, what
we all know to be true. It seems to him that one thing or another
is an expression of his or her neutrality, but it isn’t neutral. It is a
specific choice that is made to see the world in a particular way
based on a set of foundational interpreting principles.
CHRISTIANS SHOULD NOT

AT T E M P T T O B E N E U T R A L
To repeat, never forget that unbelievers are not neutral. It is

impossible for them to be neutral. It can’t be done. Second, you
shouldn’t be neutral. In John 17:7, Jesus prays that we be sancti-
fied by the truth and then He says, “Thy word is truth.” We are
to be set aside and consecrated by the Word of God. We cannot
be neutral if we’re a holy people, a set-apart people, a separate
people—and what separates us and makes us different is that we
follow the Word of God.
Not only should you not be neutral because Jesus prayed that
you would be sanctified, but it would also be immoral for you
to try to be neutral. In Matthew 6:24, Jesus says, “No man can
serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the
other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” Here
the specific application Jesus has in mind is that we cannot serve
God and Mammon, God and money. But the basic principle He
lays down is that we can’t serve two masters. It is impossible to
go into a classroom and say, “I’m going to honor the Lord Jesus
Christ in all that I do, all that I think, and all that I say. But I’m
also going to honor the master of autonomous rationality or
honor my teacher or honor the secular standards of this field of
study. I’m going to serve them both equally.” Jesus says you can’t.
Jesus does not put up with any kind of double mindedness.
He doesn’t say, “You can be a little bit loyal to those other things,
but mainly be loyal to Me.” He says, “You must be exclusively
loyal to Me.” You must be exclusively loyal to Jesus, sold out
to Him in everything that you do and say, and even in the way
you reason.
If you must be sanctified by the word of truth so that you

don’t walk in the darkness of the ignorance of the Gentile mind,
then you cannot be neutral. You can’t serve two masters. As we
saw in the previous chapter, if we try to be neutral, if we don’t
follow a philosophy that is after Christ, it will result in being
robbed of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that are in
Jesus Christ.
In biblical perspective, regardless of what your teacher says,
regardless of what your roommate says, no matter what an un-
believing friend says, there are two warring outlooks and there
is no compromise and no peace between them.
We see this in 1 Corinthians 1. When Paul wrote that let-
ter to the Corinthian Christians, he had just left the center of
Greek philosophy, Athens, Greece (Acts 17:16–34). He had an
encounter there with the philosophers, the Stoics and the Epi-
cureans. These sorts of issues were on his mind, and here’s how
Paul responded to his experience in Athens when he wrote to
the church at Corinth. “For the word of the cross is to them that
perish foolishness; but unto us who are saved it is the power of
God” (1 Cor. 1:18).
Paul said the following to those who heard his message in Ath-
ens: “You have the word of the cross. You have the gospel. And
you’re going to get two responses. Some people see it as foolish;
some people see it as the very power of God” (Acts 17:32–34).
For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and

the discernment of the discerning will I bring to nought” [Isa.
29:14]. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the
disputer [debater] of this world? Hath not God made fool-
ish the wisdom of the world? For seeing that in the wisdom
of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was
God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of preaching to
save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:19–21).
Paul speaks here a little tongue-in-cheek. He means it like

this: “The world calls our preaching foolish. Fine. But then in
the wisdom of God, He takes the foolishness of preaching and
has it undo the wisdom of this world.”
Seeing that Jews ask for signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom:
but we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling block,
and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wis-
dom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men;
and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1:22–25).
There isn’t going to be any neutrality, regardless of what peo-

ple may fool themselves into thinking and believing and what
they may outwardly profess.
There isn’t going to be any neutrality, regardless

of what people may fool themselves into
thinking and believing and what they may
outwardly profess.
The gospel is either going to be foolishness or wisdom to

them. You can’t put these things away and say, “Let’s not have
any view of the existence of God and his revelation and our
relationship to Him and of the place of Jesus Christ. Let’s just
put all of that aside and look at the subject in a neutral light.”
NEUTRALITY’S SMUGGLERS
No one will be neutral, and those who pretend to be neutral are

really smuggling in some underlying philosophies that they’re
not aware of. That, of course, is the most dangerous thing to do,
not to be aware of what your presuppositions actually are. Every-
one will take things for granted. They all say that their standards
for discovery, their view of the limits of reality, are common to
every thinker and so are neutral, but we’ll see that is not the case.
Whatever a person says about how he knows what he knows
(epistemology) and what he thinks about the nature of reality
(metaphysics) is a reflection of an underlying philosophical
commitment, and he no more gets rid of it when he argues
with you than you can get rid of breathing while you talk about
breathing. If you discuss any subject whatsoever there are going
to be certain assumptions about the nature of reality, about how
we know what we know, and about how we should live our lives.
Maybe I can make it clearer by this illustration. You go to
your professor’s office after class. Let’s say she’s been teaching
cultural anthropology and he throws in some explicit references
about what she claims is our evolutionary past. You want to
discuss this with her and so you meet with her privately and
bring up the matter.
The professor says, “I’m not really sure you Christians are in-
telligent enough to discuss this subject. I think you’re really fol-
lowing a Sunday School kind of faith. You’re being very child-
ish. You’re not being intellectual and rational enough. You need
to follow my authority.”
Now, you could debate with her about the nature of faith,
authority, and philosophy. Or you could forget all of that and
pull out a gun and say, “Listen, you’re changing your mind or
you’re dying.” Of course, you wouldn’t do it that way. But what
if you did? What if you said, “We’re putting aside all philo-
sophical commitments”? We have no values as we enter this dis-
cussion, and so, starting from scratch, I’ve decided that might
makes right, and I’m going to force you to agree with me.”
Do you think your professor would say, “Well, yes, that’s one
option. We need to consider that. We all have to be neutral.”
No. She expects you to come into her office and be a gentleman
or a lady, to respect her to some degree, to bring up rational
considerations and evidence that is open to public examination.
There’s an expected protocol. There are certain expectations for
the way we argue—but that very expectation is a commitment
to a kind of lifestyle. It is the rejection of the lifestyle of violence
as a way of settling disputes.
When the professor tells you that you cannot use violence to
prove your point, she has shown that she is committed to a cer-
tain kind of ethic. Interestingly, we’re committed to that ethic,
too. As Christians, we don’t think we settle things violently. We
don’t believe converting people by the sword, which is a Muslim
technique. We don’t believe we should use violence to try to get
people to change their minds.
But we have a reason for saying that and your professor
doesn’t (although she will claim she does)—and that is going
to be the heart of your apologetic. You want to show that your
professor does have an underlying worldview and that, accord-
ing to her worldview, she can’t make sense out of those things
she takes for granted but you can.
Everyone takes certain things for granted. You might think
you want to argue with your professor about, say, the facts of
creation versus evolution or the historical evidence for the resur-

rection of Jesus, and every once in a while, there will be a place
for that. But the easiest way to get to the bottom of the dispute
between you and an unbelieving professor, roommate, office as-
sociate, or friend is to talk about what you both take for granted.
You don’t even need to get into the disputed area; you can talk
about what you know to be true—for instance, that we should
try to settle the dispute between us non-violently. Why not?
Suppose you’re my unbelieving friend. You and I have a dis-
agreement and you say, “Look, we have to settle this disagree-
ment. We’ll each get a gun. We’ll walk off fifteen steps and turn
around and shoot, and whoever is standing is the winner.” I
must be honest with you. I’m going to have you walk off the
fifteen steps and I’m going to shoot you in the back while you’re
walking.
You’d say “That’s unfair! You’re breaking the rules! Don’t do
that to me!” But why not? Given your worldview, why not?
The unbeliever would say, “I don’t believe there’s a God, so I
can’t say that God tells us not to settle our disputes that way and
not to break our promises and violate the rules, and so forth.”
That’s not an option for him, so he’ll come up with something
like the utilitarian standard of ethics: If we want to maximize
happiness in this world, people shouldn’t break the rules.
By the way, that’s true. When people break the rules and
social interaction is unpredictable, that creates social chaos and
unhappiness. The unbeliever is right about that. But the un-
believer has a real problem, because when he argues that way
your next question is going to be “Why should I care about the
happiness of others?” He was taking that for granted. But by
what standard?
B O R R O W I N G M O R A L C A P I TA L F R O M
THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW
As Christians, we’re accustomed to thinking in an ethical way

toward others. We’re to follow the Golden Rule. We’re to be
loving. We’re to keep the rules. We’re not to be unfair. We’re not
to abuse people. We’re not to force ourselves on people. We take
all of that for granted. You must not let the unbeliever take cer-
tain things for granted. You must not let the unbeliever steal
from your philosophy, that is, to borrow moral capital from
your worldview, and then pretend he hasn’t done that.
You must not let the unbeliever take certain

things for granted. You must not let the
unbeliever steal from your philosophy, that is,
to borrow moral capital from your worldview,
and then pretend he hasn’t done that.
You must not let the unbeliever say, “We all know we’re sup-
posed to play fair.” What you want to say is, “Well, I know that
we’re supposed to play fair, but I don’t know why you say that.
I don’t know what you could possibly say to convince me that I
shouldn’t have settled this dispute with a gun given your natu-
ralistic worldview.”
Utilitarianism assumes that I am obligated to seek the hap-
piness of others. How about this one? The unbeliever says, “You
shouldn’t be unfair to me and you shouldn’t tell lies because
that would really undermine your own self-esteem. Your own
integrity will be lost.”
Again, thinking as a Christian, you say, “That’s right. If I try

to convince someone based on threats, I really am a scum of a
person.” But you’re thinking as a Christian. Your comeback is
going to be something like this: “Remember, Professor, you’re
the one who taught us that the scientific consensus is that we
are animals.” Now his philosophy is coming back to haunt him.
You just took the implications of his worldview to Boston.
If your unbelieving professor or friend can’t convince you
based on personal integrity or social utility, what can he appeal
to? The fact is that whatever he appeals to, you have one more
question waiting: Why am I obligated to follow that standard?
You see, given his worldview, he has no authority to make abso-
lute moral judgments.
Unbelievers have an underlying philosophy that they’re ap-
plying in their argument with you. And you, at that point, are
going to start coming back with your apologetic. You’re going to
start using cross-examination to show the unbeliever that he has
made a commitment that takes him to one destination when he
thinks he’s getting off at another. Show him where his world-
view ends up. Show him that if he wants to keep the standards
of rationality or science or morality that we take for granted, he
will have to affirm the Christian worldview.
MORAL BLAME SHIFTING
It is important to understand, at this point, why unbelievers

insist they are neutral even though they aren’t. The unbeliever,
according to the Bible, is guilty before God. Being guilty before
God is going to have serious consequences for all eternity. God
hates sin, and those who are guilty of it will feel His wrath. This
isn’t a matter of a disagreement about the price of a Whopper

at Burger King. This is a matter with eternal consequences. The
unbeliever must be serious about his worldview choices.
Now the unbeliever says, “We can all be neutral. It’s possi-
ble for us to lay aside all religious conceptions, all assumptions
about the nature of God and the world and man.” If the unbe-
liever could do that, then he would be able to accuse God for
not giving enough evidence to convince him of His existence.
The unbeliever says, “I just haven’t been convinced that there’s a
God. That’s really God’s fault. If God had made it clear to me,
then I wouldn’t be neutral, but the existence of God is not ob-
vious. A lot of people don’t believe in God, the Christian God.
A lot of people don’t follow the Bible. God hasn’t made it clear,
and that’s really God’s fault.” Wouldn’t that be a great excuse?
Children use this sort of technique. “I didn’t understand
that’s what you wanted, Dad.” Then whose fault is it that the
bed didn’t get made or the lawn didn’t get mowed? Dad wants
the kids in at midnight, but they show up at 12:30 the next
morning. “I thought you said 12:30, Dad.” “No, I said mid-
night.” “But Dad, you really did say 12:30. . . .”
What is the point of that interchange? It’s to say, “Dad, you’re
the one who made the mistake, not me. I’m really obedient. If
you didn’t get what you wanted, it has to be your fault.”
Unbelievers play that childish game with God their heavenly
Father. “We didn’t understand. We weren’t even sure you were
there. The evidence wasn’t clear. How do You expect us to live
up to what You want when You don’t tell us?” The unbeliever
wants to insist on neutrality because then the onus is on God
for his unbelief and his wretched lifestyle and sin. Paul says in
Romans 1:18–22:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all un-
godliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth
in unrighteousness; because that which is known of God is
manifest in them.
The Apostle Paul says that unbelievers know

God because God made Himself known. That
is why the wrath of God is revealed against
them. It is because they are “suppressing the
truth in unrighteousness.”
How can you be sure of that?
For God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of

Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being per-
ceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting
power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: because
that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither
gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their
senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools.
Paul says that God has manifested Himself from heaven in

such a clear and indisputable and inescapable way that all men
know Him. They don’t just know Him in some fuzzy ethereal
way. It is not as though God has declared Himself but can’t
speak clearly. It’s not “What God are You and what do you want
from us?” Paul says that they know God clearly because God is
the one who has made Himself known. That is why the wrath of
God is revealed against men. It is because they are “suppressing

the truth in unrighteousness.”
You will never make headway dealing with unbelievers if
you forget that unbelievers are suppressing the truth. They
know God. They cannot help but know God because their
very existence and ability to think and process information
are dependent on Him (Acts 17:24–28). It’s not because you
have such great arguments. You don’t need them. God has
made Himself known. Everyone should look at the created
world and give praise to God.
Nor do they just know that there is a god; it is the living and
true God that Paul tells us they know. In fact, in the Greek Paul
uses the definite article: “the God.” He doesn’t say they know
that there’s a god, that they have some sense of divinity, some
general notion of the supernatural. They know God personally,
so much so that God is angry with them. His wrath is revealed
day by day from heaven against them.
God’s wrath is seen in different ways as people rebel against
Him and the full implications of their worldview expresses it-
self. It’s seen in riots. It’s seen in economic distress. It’s seen
in psychological depression. It’s seen in confusion. It’s seen in
those who commit suicide. It’s seen in wars. It’s seen in revolu-
tions. It’s seen in many ways.
Even the most quiet individual who doesn’t seem to have
any problems in his or her life knows the wrath of God be-
cause every individual, in one way or another, is going to
answer to God at death—and every individual is concerned
about death. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven very
clearly because He is known and those who know Him sup-
press the truth.
R AT I O N A L I Z I N G A W AY W H AT
IS KNOWN TO BE TRUE
But when you suppress the truth, does that mean you’re always
self-conscious about suppressing it? When you talk to your un-
believing professor, is he or she sitting there saying, “I know
there’s a God and I’m trying to escape that, but I’m going to lie
to this person”? If you had broken one of your mother’s expen-
sive vases and she comes home and says, “What happened?,”
you might say, “Beats me! It must have been the cat.” That
would be an outright lie. You know you’re guilty and you’re
thinking about your guilt while you’re making up this story to
get your mom to think you’re not at fault. But I’m not saying
that’s what unbelievers do. Paul says they “suppress the truth
in unrighteousness.” They push it down. They distort it. They
don’t want to look at it. They rationalize it. They try to escape it.
They can’t do it. They can’t ever get away from knowing the
true God, and that’s why they’re guilty before Him. It’s like the
game you play in the swimming pool where you’re throwing a
volleyball around. “Who’s got the ball?,” you ask, and everyone
puts their hands up. Where’s the ball? Someone’s sitting on the
volleyball, suppressing it under the water. But in the act of sup-
pressing the volleyball, that person is in contact with the volley-
ball. And that’s my point: In the act of suppressing the truth,
the unbeliever is in contact with the truth.
The unbeliever knows the God, Paul says. He knows the
living and true, one and only God. But the unbeliever can’t
think, day after day, “I’m guilty. I’m guilty. I’m guilty of lying
and pretending there is no God and not answering to Him.”
What do you do when you can’t face your guilt? What do you
do when you don’t want to think of yourself as actually doing

something disreputable? You hide it. Sometimes you try to hide
it from yourself, and we hide things from ourselves by rational-
izing, by saying, “I had a good reason for it. For other people,
that would be wicked, but I had a good reason for it.” Some-
times we do our wickedness so habitually that we stop thinking
self-consciously about it. We can fool ourselves.
In the act of suppressing the truth, the unbe-

liever is in contact with the truth.
Unbelievers who don’t want to face God, who don’t want

to be answerable to God, can rationalize and can habitually
put God out of their mind. Of course, they’re still sitting on
the volleyball. They’re still in contact with the truth. But they
must develop these mind games and personal strategies for not
having to answer to God. That’s what Paul says: They know the
truth and suppress it in unrighteousness—and what’s the out-
come? Paul says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools.”
Our colleges and universities are filled with people who
have a Ph.D. but are tenured fools in the eyes of God. They’ve
done a lot of reading. They have skills. But they are fools. If
you suppress the truth in unrighteousness, the Bible says, you
become a fool in your thinking. Your senseless heart will be
darkened.
When we defend the Christian faith against other world-
views, we need to keep these things in mind. When you’re
tempted to think, “We’ve got to give up our biblical distinctives
so everyone has to be neutral,” keep in mind that they are not

neutral, and you should not be.
The reason they would like you to think they are neutral is
that it’s one of the ways they suppress the truth in unrighteous-
ness. They know God, but this is one of the ways in which they
don’t have to face up to God. “We don’t think about religion in
biology class. We don’t bring Christianity in when we’re talking
about literature or philosophy or whatever it may be. We’re go-
ing to be neutral.”
Even though they know God, they’ll pretend they don’t.
And the result of that is that they will become foolish in their
thinking. In the chapters that follow, I will teach you to ex-
ploit that foolishness so that they see the implications of their
views. They know the same God you worship. They believe in
rationality. They believe in science. They believe in the uni-
formity of nature. They believe in moral absolutes. They be-
lieve in the dignity of man. They know these things, but they
have no right to appeal to them—and so you’re going to take
those things away from them and say, “The only way you can
think this way, the only way you can justify believing in those
things, is by admitting the truth about the God I worship as a
Christian.”
GLOSSARY
Borrowed capital: “The truth known and acknowledged by the

unbeliever. He has no right to believe or assert truth based
on his own presuppositions, but only on Christian ones so
his assertions of truth are based on borrowed capital.”2
2. Frame, Apologetics, 290.
Epicureanism: Argues that pleasure is the chief good in life.

Hence, Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive
the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one’s life-
time, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering
incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure.
Golden Rule: The principle of treating others as you want to be
treated. Jesus said, “In everything, therefore, treat people the
same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and
the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12).
Stoicism: “Virtue is the only worthwhile aim and a virtuous man,
by the use of right reason, can discover his proper place in the
universe and achieve happiness whatever his circumstances.”3
Utilitarianism: Maximize happiness in this world for the greatest
number of people without regard to moral commands or a fixed
standard to determine what’s ultimately good or bad. The utili-
tarian says you should do what is in the best interest of the most
people. The greatest happiness for the greatest number is what
should govern your free will. You should do whatever will be
conducive to the good of everyone, as much as you possibly can.
1. When an unbeliever pleads with you to “just be neutral and

lay aside your religious presuppositions. Let the facts lead you
to the right conclusions,” you should reject that idea. Why?
2. What does the Bible teach about the reason that unbelievers
live as they do?
3. How does Jesus make it clear in John 17 and Matthew 6 that
it is impossible for the believer to be neutral?
3. Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, 436.
4. We read in Acts 17 about Paul’s encounter with Stoic and

Epicurean philosophers when he was in Athens. How did
this confrontation with them influence what he wrote shortly
thereafter to the Corinthian church in I Corinthians 1?
5. What would be a good response to an unbeliever who insists
that everyone knows that we are all supposed to play fair?
6. What does the Bible mean when it declares that unbelievers
“suppress the truth in unrighteousness”?
CHAPTER 6
WHAT IS
PHILOSOPHY?
This may be the toughest chapter in Against all Opposition, the

one that might lose you. I’m warning you ahead of time and
asking you to stick with me until we get these basics down. I’m
going to show you how to start dismantling the unbeliever’s
worldview, but in order to do it well you have to know what
you’re doing and dealing with.
I have told you that everyone has a worldview. You have one,
and the unbeliever has one. When the unbeliever wants you
to be neutral, he is trying to neutralize you, to take away your
worldview and then continue using his own, which amounts
to winning the debate by default. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
He will not give up his presuppositions. It’s impossible to
do so. You must not give up your presuppositions. Self-con-
sciously, you know where you’re coming from. You know why
you believe what you do. You know how you’re supposed to live
your life in terms of it. And now what you’re going to do—to
107
use the illustration we started the book with—you’re going to

show him that his plane really is heading for Boston and that he
doesn’t get to deplane at Chicago as he hopes.
Everyone has an underlying philosophy. I think of an indi-
vidual I know who believes that we cannot hold homosexuals
accountable for what we think of as their perversion because
they were made that way. When a person says, “made that way,”
he doesn’t really have in mind a personal God making him a
homosexual. He just thinks some people come into the world
with that disposition, as if they are programmed to have a sexual
desire for members of the same sex. On the other hand, he uses
strong language and says we ought to go after dictators and stop
them. Why aren’t dictators made to be dictators?
Now, does this person have a philosophy? He doesn’t sound
like a sophisticated philosopher when he talks that way. But
does he have a philosophy? He has a very profound philosophy.
“ I W A S M A D E T H I S W AY ”
First, he believes that people are not responsible for what they
do because they are programmed that way. They are like rats
in a psychological experiment. They’ve been conditioned, and
their responses are according to their conditioning. Homosex-
uals, he says, aren’t just conditioned; they come into the world
biologically preset to have sexual desires of a certain kind. That
is a profound view of human nature.
He also has another view of the world, a view of human so-
ciety and how it’s organized. He thinks somehow our political
leaders are the anointed ones, that the United States has the
right to go around the world and blow the brains out of any
What is Philosophy? 109
dictator we don’t happen to like or who might happen to get

in the way of our nation’s political and economic desires. There
are people who can give you a more sophisticated rundown of
that philosophy than this individual, but it is a philosophy and
it has been followed.
But I also want to point out one more thing about this per-
son who says homosexuals can’t help it and we ought to enact
regime-change in countries that aren’t like ours. His political
philosophy and his philosophy of humanity are in conflict—
and he doesn’t even know it because he hasn’t bothered to do
philosophy self-consciously. He has just wandered over here and
thought about this subject and then wandered over there and
thought that about that subject. He has not tried to regiment
his thinking to make it consistent.
Do you see where the conflict is? He says homosexuals can’t
help what they do. But on that view of human nature, dictators
can’t help what they do either. If that’s the case, and you’re not
going to oppose homosexuality because they were made that
way, then what gives you the right to oppose dictators who were
also made that way? He has a profound philosophy, but it’s not
a philosophy that’s in agreement with itself.
NOT ALL PHILOSOPHY IS

GOOD PHILOSOPHY
The issue is not whether you do philosophy, but how well you
do it. People do not decide to do philosophy or not to do phi-
losophy, because doing philosophy is unavoidable. The only
question is whether we will do our philosophical thinking re-
flectively, consistently, and well.
The ordinary man in the street is distinguished from the ac-

ademic philosopher by his lack of resolve to answer the funda-
mental questions of life in a consistent, self-conscious, reflective
way. The difference between him and the philosophy professor
is only one of degree. All are philosophers, but not all aim to be
good ones.
Everyone does philosophy. The issue is not

whether you do philosophy, but how well you
do it. People do not decide to do philosophy
or not to do philosophy, because doing
philosophy is unavoidable.
If you are going off to college and choose a major in philoso-

phy, I’m telling you something that may surprise you: Everyone
is doing philosophy whether it’s their major or not. When I
chose to get a Ph.D. in philosophy, it made it easier on me than
on other people because what I decided to study is what every-
one thinks about all the time anyway. I didn’t have to choose to
be a medical doctor and study human anatomy or be a historian
and find out things about the War of 1812. I just had to keep
thinking about what I was always thinking about.
I can’t live in other people’s heads, so I can’t be sure of this,
but I don’t think I was terribly different from the kids I went to
high school with. I played tennis and basketball. I was student
body president. I went to college, had a girlfriend. Life for me
was like everyone else’s. It’s not as though I sat around being
more reflective than other people. It’s not as though I started
having thoughts about Plato and Aristotle in seventh grade
and then finally went off to college and got to think about it.
That’s not what I’m saying.
What I am saying is that every human being thinks about
these questions, but not every human being decides to stick
with it. You can take the most uneducated person you know,
and at some point in his life he has wondered, “What is real and
what is not real?” Everyone who decides that Santa Claus is not
real has practiced some degree of philosophy.
Everyone does philosophy, but not everyone sticks with it. In
fact, a lot of people don’t understand the nature of philosophy
and, once they see what it looks like to do philosophy well, they
get disgusted with it or bored by it or say, “Who wants to do that?”
I’ll grant you this much: If you jump into a discussion be-
tween philosophers at the midpoint of the discussion and don’t
understand where the arguments come from, I think philoso-
phy will look silly. That’s why jokes are told about philosophers,
like the armchair intellectuals who sit around saying, “Why is
there air?” People make fun of them, but the reason they can get
away with making fun of philosophers is that they don’t know
where a philosophical problem comes from.
But everyone is naturally curious. If a baby were to lie in his
crib and not reach out for the mobile or ever recognize Mom’s
face, we would know there was something seriously wrong with
the baby. God made human beings curious. I believe that cu-
riosity is part of the image of God in the sense that He made
us to have dominion over this world, to learn about this world,
to control this world in an ethical manner and respond to this
world in a way that gives glory to Him and obeys Him.
That begins very early with curiosity. Infants try to control
their environment, just as we try to control our environment as
adults. They want to know what the toys do. They want to have
the toys there when they want them. They want the world to
be an efficient place in which they can live at their infant level.
We’re all curious. Praise God, we don’t stay infants in our
mentality, because a child’s curiosity is not systematic. A child
will be interested in beating the pots and pans for a time and
then, without you seeing any reasoning process or decision-mak-
ing taking place, will just give up the pots and pans and go to
something else. They do a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
But eventually, we grow up and go to school and learn to sit
still for 45 minutes and have a lesson in grammar or math or
whatever. The process of education systematizes our curiosity
and teaches us to reduce our experience of the world to general-
izations. This is what the process of intellectual growth is all
about and what the educational process tries to develop: your
ability to reduce the diversity of your experience to certain law-
like generalizations.
The process of education systematizes our cu-

riosity and teaches us to reduce our experience
of the world to generalizations. This is what the
process of intellectual growth is all about and
what the educational process tries to develop:
your ability to reduce the diversity of your ex-
perience to certain law-like generalizations.
We learn about what happens when you put blue and yellow
together. You get green. I learned that in kindergarten. Left to
myself, I doubt that I would ever have stopped to systematize
that. But we learn how colors go together or how numbers go

together or how to construct bridges or how to play a game and
show sportsmanship and so on.
The whole education process is a matter of higher and higher
levels of generalization, reducing the diversity of the world to
law-like principles and generalizations. We move from childlike
curiosity to being more disciplined in our thinking.
P H I L O S O P H Y I S R E S O LV I N G
DIFFERENCES AND CONFLICTS
Now what happens when you start generalizing about your ex-
perience in the world is that you find that certain conflicts come
to mind.
You start to generalize about human nature. You don’t call
it “human nature,” but you realize that if someone tries to get
in line ahead of someone else, there’s going to be a negative re-
action. That’s a low-level understanding, a realization that there
are some people in this world who are bullies and there are other
people you can bully without them doing anything about it.
You learn that some people are pleasant to be around, but
other people aren’t. You learn that some people like math and
others don’t. You start realizing that there are differences be-
tween human beings.
Now what if you were to generalize from that? You might
conclude that what makes people happy is relative. Some peo-
ple are like this. Some people are like that; therefore, everything
is relative.
Most people are relativists, and they live comfortably with
their relativism. Sadly, in our culture, they believe that because
people have different tastes, then our values are up for grabs,
just a matter of whatever pleases you.
But we also learn in physics and chemistry and other hard
sciences that there are things that work together in a causal re-
lationship. If you’re playing billiards and you hit the cue ball
across the table and it strikes the 10-ball at a certain angle and
certain velocity, it’s going to rebound off the side of the pool
table and go into the pocket. None of us doubts that if the 10-
ball is in exactly that position tomorrow, you can use the same
technique and get the same effect. We believe the cue ball and
the 10-ball have a relationship that is not “different strokes for
different folks,” as if their relationship is going to be different on
Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. We’ve learned that they have
a causal relationship.
In fact, before you got to school and systematized it, you
learned about causal relationships at home, too. When you put
your hand on Mom’s hot stove, you said, “Ouch!” The next day,
you didn’t say, “The world is a random place and maybe it won’t
hurt today.” No, you said, “I live in a causal universe, and given
the nexus of these relationships, I know it’s going to burn my
flesh and that won’t feel good.”
We grow up and learn certain generalizations about the world.
We’ve talked about two of them. One is that the world operates
in a cause-and-effect, law-like fashion. The other is that everyone
is different in some way. When you ask, “How do I bring these
two principles together?,” you’ve started doing philosophy.
You might stop and think, “Why should I care what the
answer is to that question?” Here’s one reason to care. Let’s say
someone has murdered your mother. No matter who you are or
what your personality type is, you’re going to want justice.
If you think of the world as a place where causal relation-

ships rule supreme, then you might conclude that it makes no
sense for you to want to see this murderer get executed. Why?
Because, just as things fall through space by the law of gravity,
and given the laws of human nature, this person couldn’t help
what he did when he killed your mother. On the other hand,
if you take the approach that it’s “different strokes for different
folks,” you might say, “I don’t even have to wait for the State to
convict this guy. I’m going to kill him.”
Neither response would be right. But important decisions
are made based on your generalizations about the nature of re-
ality, how you know what you know, and how you think you
ought to live your life.
When we ask the question, “Should we execute murderers?,”
people will defend their answer by taking a step back and rest-
ing on their generalization about the world or human nature or
whatever it may be. They defend their view on very important
issues by falling back on their philosophical assumptions.
W H AT D O E S I T M E A N T O
“DO PHILOSOPHY”?
Everyone does philosophy. But what does it mean to “do philos-

ophy”? There are two tasks of philosophy. First, there is a critical
task: The philosopher cross-examines people’s opinions. Doing
this doesn’t make philosophers popular. It’s why Socrates was
executed. He would go around talking to people. They said they
knew what justice was or what beauty was. Socrates would ask
them questions and lead them along and show that they didn’t
know what they were talking about. They had not systematized
their thinking or their generalizations about experience in the

world. For that they killed him. People don’t always like it when
you ask questions about what they believe and cross-examine
them and thereby calling their way of thinking (philosophy/
worldview) inconsistent.
That is the critical task of philosophy. That’s where philoso-
phers are analytical. They try to draw distinctions. They look for
logical relationships. They try to get people to make sure they
have evidence for what they say and aren’t just being arbitrary.
Philosophers try to draw distinctions. They

look for logical relationships. They try to get
people to make sure they have evidence for
what they say and aren’t just being arbitrary.
The critical task of philosophy seeks reliable presuppositions

for all our thinking. You can picture those presuppositions as
the foundation of a building. They’re the underlying assump-
tions that are reliable with respect to the nature of reality, that
is, with metaphysics.
M E TA P H Y S I C S , E P I S T E M O L O GY,
AND ETHICS
Metaphysics is the study of the nature of reality. What lies be-

which we live? Where did it come from? What is its structure?
What things are real? Are angels real? How many angels can
dance on the head of a pin?
“Aha!,” you say. “What a beautiful illustration of how silly

philosophy is!”
But that common illustration of the futility and the periph-
eral nature of philosophy was a tantalizing way of expressing a
very deep and important metaphysical question: What is the
basis of individuation? What makes you different from me?
What makes any two things in a particular class different from
one another?
There are two ways of answering that, and both have ap-
parently good arguments for them. One is to say that they are
distinguished by their characteristics. You and I are both in the
class of human beings. But your nose doesn’t look like my nose.
That’s a characteristic that sets us apart.
Another answer is to say that you’re a human being and I’m
a human being, but what sets us apart is that there is different
matter in you than there is in me. If your mom spreads out
cookie dough and uses a cookie cutter to cut out one ginger-
bread man and then another, they both look the same but the
dough in one is not the same as the dough in the other. Some
differences are subtle while others are more striking.
Now angels are distinguished by immaterial matters and
characteristics and not by physical matter. Then how many an-
gels can dance on the head of a pin? If they don’t take up ma-
terial space, how many can fit on the head of a pin? An infinite
number, because there is no material limit.
When medieval philosophers put out that little conun-
drum—if, in fact, they really did—that was a way of asking
about a very profound question. Is matter what individuates
things or is it characteristics that individuate things? Those are
metaphysical questions.
Does God exist? Where did the world come from? Does man
have a soul? Is there life after death? Those are metaphysical
questions.
The philosopher critically examines what people say, look-
ing for their metaphysical assumptions, and says which ones are
reliable.
Second, philosophy is interested in epistemology: What is
the nature and what are the limits of human knowledge? How
do you know what you know? You take those things for granted,
but they are worth thinking about.
If I ask, “How do you know that your mother loves you?,”
you might say, “I remember things that she has done for me.
She clothed me. She took care of me when I was sick. She gives
me Christmas presents. She kisses me goodbye. She writes me
letters.” But then I will say, “How do you know she did those
things?” You say, “I remember them.” And I reply, “How do you
know that your memory is reliable?” Now what are you going to
say? Your memory is reliable because you remember that your
memory was reliable when you tested it last time? That’s beg-
ging the question, using memory to support memory. You’re in
a loop of justification.
Epistemology is the nature and what are the

limits of human knowledge? How do you
know what you know? You take those things
for granted, but they are worth thinking about.
We also look for reliable presuppositions with respect to

ethics. How should we live our lives? Can homosexuals help
what they do? Can dictators and terrorists help what they do?
Why or why not? Many people live their lives based upon cer-
tain presuppositions about human conduct that are not well
thought-out. The philosopher has the critical task of looking
for reliable presuppositions about reality, knowledge, human
conduct, and ethics.
PHILOSOPHY IS NOT LIMITED

TO THE CLASSROOM
That’s only one thing the philosopher does and, again, everyone
is a philosopher. Not everyone is a professional philosopher or
trained in philosophy. Not every person does it well. But every-
one does have views about reality, about how we know what we
know, and about how we should live our lives.
When you go into the different departments at the univer-
sity, you will find that the teachers will do research and will lay
out truths for you about different areas of life. But all of them
are doing philosophy. The historian has his task to do, but he
can’t do it without a foundation in metaphysics, epistemology,
and ethics. The biology teacher is interested in getting world-
wide generalizations about living things, but those generaliza-
tions rest upon a philosophy about the nature of reality, how he
knows what he knows, and how we should live our lives. And
that’s true of all the other areas of study, as well—astronomy,
literature, music, and so on.
It’s true of the rest of life, too. It’s true of shopping. You have
a philosophy when you go shopping. I don’t mean a philosophy
about how to get the best prices and so forth, but a founda-
tional philosophy that undergirds that activity.
What if you were a good Hindu? Would a good Hindu ever

go shopping? A Hindu says that all of reality is maya, illusion.
But if everything is illusion, then the difference between 9
and 12 is illusion. When you shop, then, you wouldn’t know
whether to buy a dozen eggs or only nine. If everything is illu-
sion, why would you pay for anything on the way out the door?
You head out to the car and someone runs up to you and says,
“Hey! You didn’t pay for those groceries!,” and you would say,
“What groceries? All is illusion. In fact, you are an illusion.”
You can’t operate in this world without some view of reality,
knowledge, and ethics. Everyone has a basic philosophy. The
first task of philosophy, we’ve said, is to critically examine peo-
ple’s assumptions to find reliable presuppositions about meta-
physics, epistemology, and ethics. These assumptions are the
foundations of people’s lives. But if those are the foundations,
we also need a roof, something that draws all these areas of life
together into what we’d call a unified worldview.
W H AT ’ S I T A L L A B O U T ?
Once we’ve done our study in literature, history, biology, phys-

ics, or whatever, someone must ask the question, “What’s it all
about?” How do you bring all of this together? How do you
relate what you’ve learned in political science class to what you
learned in the literature class to what you learned in the psy-
chology lab experimenting with how rats respond to stimuli?
What are humans? Just animals or something capable of love?
Is he something that’s wretched, that destroys and murders and
rapes and steals, or is he something that is close to God? What
is man and what is life all about? What is the meaning of life?
Those are questions that are sometimes ridiculed, but every-

one asks about the meaning of life. Everyone says, “What am
I here for? Was I really born just to be raised to get a job and
get married and have babies that are raised to get jobs and get
married and have babies that are raised . . . ? Is that really all it’s
about? Is that why we’re here?”
People get philosophical when their friends die. Why do we
have funerals and memorial services? What is all of that about?
That’s what philosophers do. They don’t do a lot of the good,
detailed, interesting stuff in between, but they help us lay a founda-
tion, and they help us tie it all together into a worldview. A world-
view is a network of presuppositions that are not tested by natural
science, in terms of which all experience is related and interpreted.
WO R L DV I E WS A R E PAC K AG E D E A LS
A worldview is a network of presuppositions, those most basic

convictions we all have about reality, about how we know what
we know, and about how we should live our lives. It’s in terms of
them that we evaluate and experience everything else. They help
you tie together all of life and make sense of it, to understand
beauty and justice and human dignity and logic and science and
the meaning of life.
That’s why I said a worldview is not tested by natural science.
You don’t test your ultimate commitments by natural science
because natural science also rests upon ultimate commitments.
The very methods of natural science depend upon a particular
view of reality.
Why haven’t Hindus developed extensive courses in medi-
cine and industrial technology? As I pointed out earlier, Hindus
believe all is maya, illusion. That doesn’t give you a lot of moti-
vation for developing natural science and the output of natural
science.
Your network of presuppositions tells you the nature of
science, the method you use in science, and how to interpret
science. It is not tested by science. It’s only in terms of those
fundamental presuppositions that you can do science.
Worldviews are package deals. You don’t get to take a little
bit out of this worldview and a little bit out of that one and
make a sort of philosophical fruit salad. You won’t find a person
who is an empiricist in his epistemology and who also holds to
Plato’s view of reality.
A worldview is a network of presuppositions,

those most basic convictions we all have
about reality, about how we know what we
know, and about how we should live our lives.
It’s in terms of them that we evaluate and
experience everything else.
Plato believed that the most ultimate reality was in the realm
of ideas or “forms.” If you see three ducks, then you must have
an idea of duckness of which they are each an instance of duck-
ness. But where is the idea of duckness? Not just in your mind.
Plato said that the idea of duckness exists outside this world.
It’s not part of time and space. There must be a realm of ideas
or forms.
But if you have that view of reality—that ultimate reality is
idea, not flesh and blood, here and now, time and space par-
ticulars—then you will not be an empiricist in your theory of

knowledge. You will not say, “We know what we know because
of our senses.” If ultimate reality is outside of time and space,
then something that is in time and space cannot be the way you
know about it.
Worldviews are package deals. People cannot say, “I’ll take a
little bit of this kind of metaphysics and a little bit of that kind
of epistemology. I like that kind of ethic, too, and so I’ll just
weave all those things together.”
Understanding worldviews has everything to do with our de-
fense of the Christian faith. But because worldviews are a package
deal, you need to understand that your Christian commitment
means that you have made a commitment for all of life. Every-
thing you think and do is tied to your Christian commitment.
You need to know as well that the challenge of your Christi-
anity at any point implicitly challenges everything you believe
as a Christian—and vice versa as well. When the unbeliever’s
worldview can be attacked at one point, the unbeliever’s world-
view is endangered at all points. Understanding what world-
views and philosophies are enables you to do a lot of internal de-
struction with the unbeliever’s worldview, as we’ll go on to see.
GLOSSARY
Aristotle rejected Plato’s contention that physical things were

representations of idealized perfect forms that existed on an-
other plane of reality. Aristotle thought that the essence of an
object existed with the thing itself.
Individuation: The process through which a person achieves a
sense of individuality separate from the identities of others
and begins to consciously exist as a human in the world.

What makes you different from me? What makes any two
things in a particular class different from one another?
Maya: Everything is illusion.
Philosophy: Technically, the love (philo) of wisdom (sophia).
As an academic discipline, philosophy is the study of the
fundamental source and nature of being, knowledge, reality,
and existence.
Plato: He believed in abstract entities (the Forms) or Ideas and
denied the material reality of the physical world. Plato con-
sidered the material world only as an image or copy of the
real world where these forms or ideas reside outside the real
world.
1. Discuss this quotation: “The issue is not whether you do

philosophy but how well you do it.”
2. What does it mean to reduce your diverse experiences to
law-like generalizations?
3. You have started doing philosophy when you begin to do
what two things?
4. What is the critical task of philosophy?
5. Why are metaphysics and epistemology important to doing
philosophy?
6. “Worldviews are package deals.” Discuss.
CHAPTER 7
CHALLENGES
OF COMPETING
WORLD VIEWS
In this chapter, we are going to start by listing different types

of worldviews. I don’t pretend that I’ll mention every school
of philosophy that has ever come along, but I will give you the
basic types of worldviews, the primary options in your philoso-
phy of life. Keep in mind that you do not have to know all the
particulars of a worldview. What you do need to know are the
underling presuppositions of a particular worldview.
Then we’ll go through various ways of looking at the world
and doing an internal critique of them, so that you have the
basic problems and questions down and you are equipped to
take on all comers.
We’ll survey the field first and then get into an internal cri-
tique of materialistic atheism, which is perhaps one of the easi-
est and most preposterous philosophies available today.
125
A LIST AND MAP OF WORLDVIEWS
Spiritual Monism and Dualism
Spiritual monism says that reality is made up of only one

kind of thing (which is why it’s called “monism,” One-ism).
All is one, and the one kind of thing that everything consists
of is spiritual in character, not physical, not material. What we
perceive as the physical world is something of an illusion. It
appears that there is matter. It appears that there are different
things out there in the world, that there are distinctions. But in
fact, all is one and the one is spiritual.
Hinduism is a good example of spiritual monism. Hinduism
says that, contrary to appearances, everything is one. There is no
distinction between you and me. There is no distinction be-
tween us and the grass and trees. All is one, and the one is God.
We are all God. Hinduism is pantheistic. It says that every-
thing is God, and God is not material. It may seem to you that
the material world is real, but it’s not. It’s an illusion because
there are no genuine distinctions in what we call reality.
Monism means there is no distinction between

you and me. There is no distinction between
us and the grass and trees.
Presently, you’re going through life. You’re on what’s called

the Wheel of Life and you must keep coming back again and
again, being reincarnated. If you don’t do well and you have
what’s called bad karma, then you are going to come back in a
lower form than you’re in right now. You might come back as
Challenges of Competing Worldviews 127
an ant or even worse. But once you live your life right, you’ll
start working your way up. If you do a good job, instead of
coming back as an ant, you might come back as a Brahma bull.
If you do a really good job, you’ll eventually stop coming back
altogether and, as it says in poetic form in the Bhagavad Gita,
the single drop will fall into the shoreless ocean of reality. Then
you’ll stop being reincarnated and you will have reached Nir-
vana. There is no personal God to evaluate a person’s life.
That’s one way of looking at the world. Hinduism is only
the leading illustration of spiritual monism. But it’s the cate-
gory that you need to get into your mind. Some people say, “All
is one.” They are monists, and in this case, their monism is a
spiritual one.
Over against monism, we have dualism. Dualism means
that there are two types of reality: mind and matter, or spirit
and body. Some things are material in nature—physical—but
there is also another kind of reality that is not physical, that is
not extended in space, but is rather spiritual, mental, or of the
nature of ideas. Among the dualists, you’ll find two basic subdi-
visions. The first is idealism, and the second is stoicism.
Idealism
The idealist grants that there is a physical world but says the
physical world is organized and is known by the ideas or types,
the concepts that govern the physical world and lie outside it.
What is an idea? Duckness is an idea. Huey, Dewey, and Louie1
are particular ducks, particular instances of the idea of duckness.
1. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are triplet cartoon duck characters who are the
nephews of Donald Duck and the great nephews of Scrooge McDuck.
The idealists, like Plato, said that the idea of duckness exists
outside of time and space in another realm. It’s a different kind
of reality, but it’s the most important kind of reality, the highest
reality, and that reality, in some way, controls this reality.
The idealist grants that there is a physical

world but says that the physical world is
organized and is known by the ideas or types,
the concepts that govern the physical world
and lie outside it.
The world in which we live features many human beings,

but no human being is a perfect human being. Everyone has
imperfections, and if they aren’t physical imperfections, then
they are imperfections of psychology or personality or mind or
something else. No one is a perfect specimen of humanity.
So, too, there is no perfect triangle. If I were teaching you
geometry and put a triangle up on the whiteboard, there always
would be something wrong with the triangle. No matter how
perfect I tried to make it, one of the lines would not be com-
pletely straight, one of the angles would not be exactly what it
should be. But we all know what a triangle is. And we all know
what a human being is. We all have the idea. It’s just that we
never find the idea perfectly embodied or illustrated in the here
and now on earth.
The idealist says that the idea of “triangle” is outside of this
world. The idea of humanity is outside of this world. The idea
of love is outside of this world. In this world, all we have at best
are approximations.
How do we know about these ideas or ideals? The idealist

ends up saying something like “We intuit them.” We come into
the world with an a priori knowledge of them, a knowledge that
comes prior to experience in this world. In this world, when we
encounter a chair, we intuit chairness, the idea of chair, and we
apply that idea to all sorts of different kinds of chairs besides the
one we first learned is a chair. There’s an idea that we intuit or that
we come into the world with that is not part of time and space.
Have you ever seen duckness? Has anyone ever killed duck-
ness or tried to serve it for dinner? You can’t do it, because you
can’t kill an idea. You can’t eat it. Ideas exist outside this world.
But, the dualist says, there’s a spiritual reality, a mind, that
knows and intuits the ideas and there’s a physical reality, a body,
that encounters the ducks, the particular ducks, the particular
triangles, the particular human beings of the world.
Stoicism
Stoicism is another form of dualism. The Stoics also believed

that there is a kind of physical reality and a mental or spiritual
reality. The Stoic, however, tended to be moralistic. He said that
in this world you can’t help the circumstances of your life, but
instead of fighting against the circumstances, you ought to go
with the flow. Whatever is happening to you in this world, you
must accept it and be stalwart about it, have a stiff upper lip and
go on with your life. As long as you struggle against the flow of
life and what is coming to you in this world, you’re going to be
unhappy and frustrated.
If life has dished out to you something that’s contrary to
your desires, then you must adjust your desires. You must bear
up with the problems of life, be a good soldier about it. That’s

what made the Stoics very good soldiers. The Roman Emperor
Marcus Aurelius loved Stoicism because if his troops studied
Stoicism, they became very obedient and submissive. Instead of
thinking they had rights that were being violated or complain-
ing that they didn’t have an easy life, they just took what was
dished out to them.
The Stoics taught that in this world you can’t

help the circumstances of your life, but instead
of fighting against them, you ought to go with
the flow.
The Stoic mentality says there is a reason or a law that flows

through the physical world, and you need to get on that wave,
ride it completely to shore, just go with what comes your way.
The idealist says that reason, ideas, ideal forms are outside of
this world. The Stoic says reason flows through the things of this
world. In both cases, you have dualism, a physical reality and a
rational or ideal or spiritual or mental reality as well.
Materialistic Atomism
A third kind of worldview is materialistic atomism. Notice

the connection between these categories, because it makes them
easier to remember. The first one was monistic: There is only
one kind of reality, in this case spiritual. The next was dualism:
There are two kinds of reality. The third is atomistic, and it says
that there is an infinite number of bits of reality, but they’re all
made of matter. Reality is made up of physical stuff, and that

physical stuff is broken down into smaller and smaller bits of
matter.
The materialistic atomist says that there is an

infinite number of bits of reality, but they’re all
made of matter. If everything is made from
bits of matter, and that’s all the reality there is,
then what is love?
That is the view that comes closest to the common outlook

of our culture today. It is the prevailing view in the sciences in
the university, and it’s what most people take for granted—that
is, until you start pressing them on the implications of materi-
alistic atomism.
One of those implications is this: If everything is made from
bits of matter and that’s all the reality there is, then what is love?
If it’s anything at all, love is just a way of describing some kind
of material process. Some people have been willing to say sexual
desire is romanticized as “love,” but basically what’s really going
on is something to do with your hormones. But, of course, that
doesn’t account for a parent’s love for his or her children or one
friend sacrificing himself for another—forms of love that have
nothing to do with sexual desires and so forth.
There are some people who try to reduce love to material
interaction of some sort, but very few people would do that.
What usually happens, if you press a materialist to define love
is to say, “Well, there isn’t really anything called love.” Or he’ll
back off on his materialism and become a bit dualistic. He does
want to believe that there are ideas, that there’s something to

this idea of giving to others and being sacrificial and loving—
but who knows what that is? Materialistic atomism is unlike
dualism in that it says, “Ultimately there are no ideas, no mind.
There is brain tissue, but there is no mind. There are no imma-
terial laws or “things” similar to them.”
Determinism
Determinism is a form of materialistic atomism where there

is no freedom in this world. Everything is determined in ad-
vance. The determinist holds that everything—every event that
takes place—is theoretically predictable if you know all the an-
tecedent causes for it. If you know the causes, you can tell what’s
going to happen.
For instance, if determinism is correct and if you had a big
enough computer that could take into account all of the causes,
all the things that would happen in your brain tissue, all the
words that would come out of my mouth, and so on, you could
predict how you’d respond, how you’d realign your seating, and
all the rest. Theoretically, it would be predictable, because there
is no freedom and no randomness in the universe. Everything
takes place because of antecedent causes.
Behaviorism
There are two primary forms of determinism that you’re

going to run into, one more common than the other. The first
is behaviorism, the psychological doctrine that says human
beings act as they are conditioned to act. The behaviorist says
that all human behavior is the theoretically predictable out-
come of antecedent conditioning, so that you are, as it were,

advanced lab rats. You are conditioned in your home and by
your society, and given that conditioning, your behavior is
theoretically predictable. You may think you have free will,
but you don’t.
Behaviorism is the psychological doctrine that

says human beings act as they are conditioned
to act.
You may think you make choices. But all of that is nothing
but the complicated outcome of factors that, if known, would
have enabled us to tell you what you were going to do. That’s
behaviorism.
Marxism
The other form of determinism is Marxism. Marxism is

somewhat different from behaviorism in that it focuses not so
much upon human psychology and what makes individuals do
what they do, but rather upon certain historical forces—in par-
ticular, economic forces and the means of production used in a
particular society—that determine the outcome of that society
as a whole. Marxism is a more aggregate form of determinism,
whereas behaviorism is more individualistic.
We’ve talked about spiritual monism and about two forms
of dualism. But there are also two forms of materialistic atom-
ism. There’s the deterministic form, which can take the form of
behaviorism or Marxism.
Hedonism and Egotism
But there is also a materialistic atomism that believes in free

will, which—as an over generalization—I’m going to call he-
donism. A hedonistic form of free will says that we live for one
thing or another—and then, of course, there are arguments over
what it is that we should live for.
The egoist—not to be confused with an egotist (someone
who is self-absorbed)—says that you should exercise your free
will for your own benefit, for whatever will get you ahead. My
ethics professor at USC, John Hospers, was one of the best-
known recent theoreticians of egoism. He promoted the polit-
ical philosophy known as libertarianism, that everyone should
be free to do what is in their best interest. You use your free will
to advance your own course. That doesn’t always mean that you
do selfish things. If you’re an intelligent egoist, you know that
it would be in your best interest to help people, at least from
time to time.
Why would that be? It’s in your long-term interest to stop
and help someone who needs his tire changed because someday
you may need someone to help you. You’re not doing it because
you love this person. You’re doing it because it’s the most ratio-
nal policy for living in a world that is favorable to you and to
your interests.
Utilitarianism
Those who are not egoistic hedonists are utilitarian. The

utilitarian says you should do what is in the best interest of the
most people. The greatest happiness for the greatest number
is what should govern your free will. You should do whatever
will be conducive to the good of everybody, as much as you

possibly can.
The best example of utilitarianism that we see in our culture
today is socialism. Socialism says that the State should govern
the means of production and that there should be no private
property. That way, everybody’s interest will be considered,
rather than each person doing what he thinks best, often self-
ishly, as in egoism. Not all utilitarians are socialists. Some are
Welfare Statists,2 and there are other versions too.
The utilitarian says you should do what is

in the best interest of the most people. The
greatest happiness for the greatest number is
what should govern your free will.
Existentialism
Finally, under the category of hedonism or the free-will un-

derstanding of materialistic atomism, we should include exis-
tentialism. Existentialism stresses the freedom of man so much
that, according to the existentialist, nothing governs what you
will be. You come into this world as an existent and then you
choose what you will be. Nothing determines your essence from
outside. God doesn’t determine what you will be. The State
doesn’t determine what you will be. Your social conditioning
2. Socialism is defined as State ownership of the means of production. What

is often called socialism today is a form of economic fascism where an all-power-
ful government manipulates the economy for the gain of the few over the many
by using its power to control the masses through welfare programs to ensure the
continue power of the ruling class.
doesn’t determine what you will be. Your biology doesn’t deter-
mine what you will be. You freely choose what you will be.
You don’t do what you do because of the schoolteacher or
the priest or the pastor or your parents. You do what you do
because you choose it. Existentialism has a radical doctrine of
freedom. You first exist and then you choose your essence, as the
famous existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
put it: “Existence precedes essence.” You will be whatever you
choose to be.
The thing that distinguishes these three basic schools of phi-
losophy is their view of the nature of reality. Is it one and spiri-
tual? Is it two, mind (or spirit) and body? Or is it one, but ma-
terial—made up of many little bits—and not spiritual? These
are the distinctions: matter or spirit or both; many things or one
thing. If you get that grid set up in your mind, just about any
view you encounter is going to fall into one of these categories,
whether they use this vocabulary or not.
Pragmatism or Skepticism
But there’s one other option that is distinguished from these

three basic ones, not on the basis of their view of the nature
of reality but on the basis of its view about whether you can
know anything for sure about ultimate reality. This fourth basic
school of philosophy I will call pragmatism or skepticism.
The pragmatist or skeptic is the philosopher who watches all
these other schools of thought argue and says, “Who cares?” The
pragmatist—like John Dewey, at the beginning of the Twenti-
eth Century—says, “All these old philosophical problems are
worthless; there’s no cash value to them. The only thing that
really makes a difference is whether you are successful in this

world in solving your problems.”
To be pragmatic, therefore, means to forget the theoretical
issues and just get on with solving things. Dewey said that it
makes no difference whether I know the nature of reality, if I am
adjusting to my environment successfully, if I am advancing the
species, if evolution is moving ahead through our efforts. If we
are successful, then that is truth. Truth is no longer correspon-
dence to the world or the nature of reality; truth is what works.
There is a humorous way of describing different approaches
to philosophy. Picture an elephant on a barge just off shore. The
question is “How do we get the elephant from the barge to the
shore?” The European philosopher would start out by saying,
“Is the elephant real?,” and move on from there. The British
philosopher, being more empirical and scientific in orientation,
would begin with the question, “How much does the elephant
weigh?” The American philosopher, being a pragmatist, would
say, “How much will you pay me to move him?”
The pragmatist or skeptic is the philosopher

who watches all these other schools of thought
argue and says, “Who cares?”
That may be a little overdone and unfair, but it gets to the

heart of the matter of pragmatism. Pragmatism says, “I don’t
care if it’s real. I really don’t care what it weighs. Where the
rubber hits the road is: What will you pay me, or will it work?”
A version of pragmatism that doesn’t go far to say that truth
is what works is skepticism. The skeptic says, “Nobody knows for
sure.” Often, he turns cynical. He says, “Since nobody knows for

sure—since we don’t know what ultimate values are or what the
nature of reality is—the only thing that really counts is getting
by in society,” not in the pragmatic sense, but in the more selfish
and self-serving sense. Skeptics often became debate coaches in
ancient Greece. The sophists, who were skeptical philosophers,
said, “There is no absolute truth. Nobody can know for sure.
So let us teach you how to get your way in the assembly by
debating well.”
This fourth category of philosophy is basically giving up on
the big questions of philosophy and just paying attention on
what works. “You can’t know anything. I can’t know anything.
We’ll just leave it at that.” This is overly simplistic, but it’s accu-
rate enough for our purposes here.
Every point of view that you come across will come down to
one of these positions or some variant of them. The people you
encounter are going to be monists and think that everything is
spiritual, or dualists of the idealist or stoic sort, or atomistic ma-
terialists, either thinking that there is free will or that there isn’t,
or pragmatists or skeptics, who will say, “It makes no difference;
it only matters that we’re successful in solving our problems”—
or, more cynically, “No one can know anything for sure.”
When you come up against someone who has a different re-
ligion from your own, the temptation will be to think that these
categories apply only to unbelieving philosophies, not to other
religions. But these other religions are not true. They are not
based on the revelation of the one and only living and true God.
And they also are a kind of philosophy. If you treat them as the
philosophies they are, then the method of refutation I give you
will be just as effective with them as it is with anything else. Keep
these schools of philosophy and their expressions in mind as we

deal with other worldview expressions and their characteristics.
At this point, I’m going to start going through different
options and showing a response to them. First, I am going to
refute atheistic materialism. Then I’ll move on to Platonic dual-
ism, which is a secular version of dualism and the best one we’ve
seen in history. And after that, I will refute religious philoso-
phies, religious worldviews.
But before we get to atheism, let’s review. What does every-
body do when they do philosophy? They must come to reliable
presuppositions that undergird everything else in their study,
and they must be able to unify the world into a worldview,
where every part of man’s experience has its appropriate place,
and everything is interpreted. We’re going to ask: Can material-
istic atheism do that?
IDENTIFY ARBITRARINESS
For you to refute a philosophy, there are different things you

can do. But two things should be on your mind. You want to
look at the worldview of the opponent and identify arbitrariness
or inconsistency.
Arbitrariness is not allowed in a philosophical outlook be-
cause then it’s not rational; it’s just a matter of however you
happen to feel that day. Arbitrariness gives you no reason for
believing that you have found the truth. Maybe you had indi-
gestion this morning and it affected your view of the nature of
reality. Or you have people who pull what they like from this
view and that view, as if they can all be true. Arbitrariness is not
allowed in a philosophical worldview.
Often, I’ve had people come to me for help with apologetics.

They’ll say, “Well, but my roommate says . . . ” or “My professor
says . . . ” And I say, “Okay, and why did they say that?” Usually
it turns out that the roommate or professor didn’t have an argu-
ment for his position.
We get bamboozled by a professor’s fancy vocabulary. But
when he states his view, we should say, respectfully, “Big deal.”
You need to get to the place where you can say to someone
you’re witnessing to, “Why do you believe that? Do you have
any reason to think that? Can you account for your claims
about this or that?”
Suppose someone says, “I think that all human behavior is
determined by social conditioning.” You say, “But why do you
believe that?” “Well, because my teacher said that.” That’s the
blind faith people think Christians are guilty of. “You believe
because your teacher said it? You’ve got to do better than that.
Why does your teacher believe it? What’s he or she basing their
belief on? By what standard?
“Well, I believe it because I’ve seen it,” he says. “Okay,” you
can say. “But you’re saying that all human behavior is determined
by antecedent social forces. Have you seen all human behavior?
All social forces? The causal connection between the two?”
Of course, he hasn’t seen that take place. He’s seen a few
human actions from which he extrapolated a social cause for
all actions. And you can say, “Then you have a logical problem.
You’re going from very slim evidence to a very broad conclusion
(hasty generalization). Your evidence will not support your con-
clusion, and so your conclusion collapses.”
You must not let the unbeliever get away with arbitrariness.
He or she must have some reason for believing what they do.
When the unbeliever says, “This is the nature of reality; this is

the way we should live our lives,” you should say, “How do you
know that?” Children get in trouble with their parents by ask-
ing Why? Why? Why? Why? over and over again. Be careful not
to be annoying in your social interaction. But that’s what you’re
doing: asking “Why?”
You’re saying, “But why do you believe that? How can that
be so? How do you know? How do you account for it?” Keep
pushing, because no one is permitted to be arbitrary.
IDENTIFYING INCONSISTENCY
Secondly, no one is permitted to be inconsistent. No one is al-

lowed to contradict himself when he puts together a philoso-
phy. Why not? I can give you several reasons, but this may be
the quickest way to point it out: You can prove anything from
inconsistent premises. Take this argument, for example, based
on the fundamental principles and laws of logic that can be
learned with some study to great benefit. I would encourage you
to learn these basic principles by taking a short course in logic:
My first premise that I assert is P. My second premise that I

assert is not-P. Very few people are going to come out and just
give you the contradiction on a platter like that. It’s usually
going to be buried in a pile of a hundred premises. But as you
go through them, you discern that this one doesn’t fit with that
one. There’s a contradiction, P and not-P can’t be true in the
same way at the same time.
If I were to be granted both P and not-P—P being the
premise affirming something and not-P being the denial of
that affirmation—then my next step in my logical argument

would be to say “P or Q.” This is by the law of addition.
Whenever one premise is true, you can add any other premise
with the word “or” and the complex premise is also true. If
today is Tuesday, then it’s true to say, “Today is Tuesday.” But
it’s also true to say, “Today is Tuesday or the moon is made of
green cheese.” Since today really is Tuesday, that statement is
also true because the first part—before the or—is true. When-
ever I have a true proposition P, I can add anything I want to it.
But now I can conclude that Q is true. This is known as the
disjunctive syllogism, and it works like this: I have said “P or
Q.” One of them must be true. If I can deny one of them, then
the other one has to be the truth. But what were my premises?
One of them was not-P, the denial of P. So, in the statement “P
or Q,” we can rule out P and that means that Q must be true.
That may seem like a little mind game, but it’s not. It’s cru-
cial. What it tells you is that when there’s an inconsistency in
a person’s philosophy, that philosophy can conclude anything
and therefore that philosophy is not just inconsistent; it’s also
arbitrary.
No matter what the worldview or argument for a worldview,
the foundational principles of apologetics remain the same. On
what ultimate foundation does the worldview rest? How is that
foundation accounted for? In the end, “The autonomous man
must be pressed to explain the necessity of the laws of logic”3
to substantiate his or her worldview and account for the logic
that’s being used to build that worldview.
3. Greg L. Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended (Pow-

der Springs, GA: American Vision, 2008), 103–104.
GLOSSARY
A priori knowledge: knowledge that comes prior to experience

in this world.
Behaviorism: The psychological doctrine that says human be-
ings act as they are conditioned to act. The behaviorist says
advanced white rats.
Determinism: The determinist holds that everything—every
event that takes place—is theoretically predictable if you know
all the antecedent (prior) causes for it, but no one ever does.
Dualism: Means that there are two types of reality: mind and
matter, or spirit and body.
Existentialism: Nothing governs what you will be. You come
into this world as an existent and then you choose what you
will be: “Existence precedes essence.” Nothing determines
your essence from outside. Jean-Paul Sartre: “What is meant
here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of
all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only after-
wards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives
him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only af-
terward will he be something, and he himself will have made
what he will be. . . . There is no human nature, since there is no
God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives him-
self to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after
this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he
makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.”4
4. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism and Humanism,” Existentialism from
Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman (New York: Meridian Publishing Co.,
1989), 340.
Hedonism: The pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.

Idealism: Says the idea of something is outside of this world.
The idea of humanity is outside of this world. The idea of
love is outside of this world. In this world, all we have at best
are approximations.
Marxism: Is somewhat different from behaviorism in that it fo-
cuses not so much upon human psychology and what makes
individuals do what they do, but rather upon certain histor-
ical forces—in particular, economic forces and the means of
production used in a particular society—that determine the
outcome of that society as a whole.
Materialistic atomism: It says that there is an infinite num-
ber of bits of reality, but they’re all made of matter. Real-
ity is made up of physical stuff, and that physical stuff is
broken down into smaller and smaller bits of matter. That
is the view that comes closest to the common outlook of
our culture today. It is the prevailing view in the sciences
in the university, and it’s what most people take for granted
until you start pressing them on the implications of their
worldview.
Nirvana: A transcendent state of bliss where there is no suffer-
ing, desire, or sense of self. The person is released from the
effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth.
Pragmatism or skepticism: The pragmatist or skeptic is the
philosopher who watches all these other schools of thought
Spiritual monism: Says that reality is made up of only one kind
of thing (which is why it’s called “monism,” One-ism). All is
one, and the one kind of thing that everything consists of is
spiritual in character, not physical, not material.
Stoicism: The Stoics believed that there is a kind of physical

reality and a mental or spiritual reality. The Stoic, however,
tended to be moralistic. He said that in this world you can’t
help the circumstances of your life, but instead of fighting
against the circumstances, you ought to go with the flow.
Whatever is happening to you in this world, you must ac-
cept it and be stalwart about it, have a stiff upper lip and go
on with your life. As long as you struggle against the flow of
life and what is coming to you in this world, you’re going to
be unhappy and frustrated.
1. How is Hinduism a good example of spiritual monism?

2. What is dualism? Define dualism’s two basic subdivisions.
3. What good effect did Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius be-
lieve that Stoicism instruction had on his soldiers?
4. What world view is closest to that of our culture today?
5. What is determinism? Why is the idea of “antecedent causes”
so important for this worldview?
6. “Marxism is a more aggregate form of determinism.” Explain.
7. John Dewey is often spoken of as a good example of a prag-
matist. What did he believe about the nature of reality?
8. In order to refute the worldview of the unbeliever, what two
things in his philosophy must you be careful to identify? Why?
CHAPTER 8
A CRITIQUE OF
ATHEISM
In the previous chapter, we surveyed the various kinds of

worldviews that are available. I told you that when you do an
internal critique of these worldviews, you’re going to be look-
ing for arbitrariness and inconsistency. Now let’s move on to
an internal critique of materialistic atheism. As we examine the
problems the atheist has in his worldview, you will see that,
from a philosophical standpoint, atheism has no credibility
whatsoever.
Some people want to know how we can defend the Bible as
the Word of God or Christianity as a worldview. Dr. Cornelius
Van Til (1895–1987) used to put it this way: Our apologetic is
that unless Christianity is true, you can’t prove anything at all.
To put it in a sophisticated way, the Christian worldview is the
transcendental precondition of intelligibility. It is the precondi-
tion—what must be the case and what must be assumed to be
the case—for anything in human experience to be intelligible.
147
The atheistic materialist says, “Christianity is not true. There

is no God. There is no soul. There is no afterlife. There’s just this
life. There’s just matter. That’s all there is. There is no spiritual
reality; there’s just the physical cosmos.” If that were the case,
you couldn’t know that it is the case and you couldn’t prove
anything at all.
Our apologetic is that unless Christianity is

true, you can’t prove anything at all.
THE PROBLEM OF INDUCTION
Consider the problem of induction. The problem of induction

might also be called the problem of causality or the unifor-
mity of nature. All science—biology or physics or psychology
or mathematics or whatever—rests upon inductive inference.
Inductive inference takes something we’ve experienced in the
past and projects it into the future.
Here’s an example. You get up in the middle of the night
and walk around in the dark and stub your toe. You go out the
next night and you’re careful not to stub your toe again. That’s
an inductive inference: If stubbing my toe last night hurt, then
stubbing my toe tonight in a similar way will hurt as well, be-
cause the way things were in the past in terms of causal relation-
ships—the way bumping my toe on the bedpost led to pain—is
going to be the way things are in the future, too.
Can you see why all science depends on induction? What
we learn about the past must be projectable into the future. All
science rests upon the uniformity of nature. If there were no
A Critique of Atheism 149
uniformity in the natural world, then all your scientific exper-

iments would be a waste of time. You could learn everything
you wanted about chemical interactions on Tuesday, but on
Wednesday that information would be useless to you.
So, in a broad sense, induction is the view that the future
will be like the past, that future relationships between events
will resemble past relationships between events.
Here’s another example. Suppose I am holding a marker in
my hand and then let go of it. In this room, under the present
barometric conditions, what will happen to the marker? You
have never seen this experiment done before. Don’t try to gen-
eralize from apples that have fallen to the floor or silverware
you knocked off the table. Don’t try to generalize at all. Don’t
rely upon past knowledge. What will happen when I let go of
the marker.
If you’re a good philosopher, you’re saying, “We have no way
of knowing. If we can’t rely on any past experience and this is
the first time we’ve encountered such a thing, who can know
what will happen?”
Now imagine that I drop the marker and it falls to the floor.
We wait twenty seconds and I pick up the marker and let go of it
again. Twenty seconds ago, the marker fell when I let go of it. But
now we are under the same atmospheric, gravitational, and baro-
metric conditions. What will happen this time when I let go of it?
You don’t know. The reason you don’t know is that you have
no basis for inductive inference. You don’t know that the fu-
ture—or what has now become the present—will be like the
past. That was twenty seconds ago. Yes, the conditions are the
same. But you cannot assume that under the same conditions,
the same event will lead to the same outcome. You cannot as-
sume the uniformity of nature. No one knows what is going to

happen to this marker when I let go of it, unless the past is a
key to the future.
Now pretend, for argument’s sake, that you are an atheistic
materialist. I’m a Christian, and I say the reason I’m going to
the science lab today to continue my investigations is that I
know there is a sovereign, personal God who made the universe
and governs and controls it and has made it regular so that I can
learn about it. Because that’s the case, I can make projections
and have dominion over the created order, to use theological
language. I am able to govern chemical reactions and make in-
dustrial plants and build rockets to go to the moon because the
information I have learned in the past can be projected into the
future. As a Christian, I have no problem with that. But what
I want to know is why you are going to the science lab today.
The atheist says we live in a random universe, so he has no
right to rely on inductive inference. He has no reason to expect
causality or the uniformity of nature. He has no basis for believ-
ing in the uniformity of nature, but then he also has no basis
for doing science. Biology, astronomy, chemistry, physics, and
even history and grammar—all are gone. The study of all these
academic subjects requires inductive inference.
Here’s the most common way that a person will try to re-
cover from this challenge involving the problem of induction.
He will often say something like this: “Very probably the future
will be like the past. I can’t tell you for sure that the marker will
drop the second time, but very probably it will. The reason it
very probably will is that it has always done so in the past.”
Do you notice the trick that was pulled right there? The per-
son who says the future will very probably be like the past has
smuggled into the argument the very thing he is supposed to

prove. When he says that the future will probably be like the
past, what is he basing that on? Past information. In the past,
the future has always resembled the past. It’s a circular
argument.
All probability arguments rely on the assumption

of uniformity. If you don’t assume that the future
will be like the past, all the probabilities based
on the past are just wasted information.
All probability arguments rely on the assumption of unifor-

mity. If you don’t assume that the future will be like the past, all
the probabilities based on the past are just wasted information.
If we live in a random universe, all bets are off. If someone says
to you, “Probably the future will be like the past,” you will say,
“You’re begging the question. That is the whole question: How
do you know the future will be like the past? Unless there is
uniformity in the world, you can’t even make a good probabil-
ity argument. Uniformity is the very thing we’re debating right
now, so you can’t import it as an assumption to support your
belief in uniformity.”
What do we have here? We have two worldviews in conflict.
The one worldview—atheism—ridicules you for your supposed
Sunday School faith in Jesus, believing in the Bible, and all of
that. But with that simple understanding of the world—that
God made the world, that He made you, that He sent His Son
to die for your sins—you can do some wonderful and pow-
erful things. The whole history of science is based on that as-
sumption, that God controls the universe in a regular way and

gives us the mental capability to have ethical dominion over the
world. On that basis, you can build factories and send rockets
to the moon and construct bridges and cure polio and do all
sorts of things.
It’s not that the Bible gives you a cure for polio, but given the
biblical worldview you can go out and learn about the world,
use inductive inference, and someday cure various forms of can-
cer. But given the atheist worldview, you can’t even go to the lab
the very first day. It doesn’t make sense.
Maybe you’re thinking, “But atheists do science.” In fact,
many atheists have accomplished more than Christians in sci-
ence. But it just goes to show that atheists are not very good
atheists. They say one thing with their mouths, but they believe
another thing in their hearts. They say there is no God and
there’s just a random universe, but in their heart of hearts they
believe in regularity. If they’ve done a procedure safely in the
past and they do it again today or tomorrow, they aren’t worried
that it might suddenly result in an explosion. But given their
view of the universe, they should be worried. They have no way
of knowing what’s going to happen in the future.
The problem of inductive inference under-

mines materialistic atheism because it makes
science impossible.
The problem of inductive inference undermines materialistic

atheism because it makes science impossible. If I were a materi-
alistic atheist and I held that view consistently, I wouldn’t worry
about stubbing my toe tonight. For all I know, it could be the

thrill of a lifetime instead of being painful as it was the night
before.
THE PROBLEM OF DEDUCTION
Now let’s think about the problem of deduction. Deductive

inference relies upon the laws of logic. When we deduce conclu-
sions, we take the laws of logic and the truths that we know, and
we do operations upon these truths according to the laws of
logic and draw other conclusions.
Deductive inference relies upon the laws of

logic. When we deduce conclusions, we take
the laws of logic and the truths that we know,
and we do operations upon these truths
according to the laws of logic and draw other
conclusions.
Here’s an example. What if I said that all men are mortal,

and that Gary is a man? What would you deduce from these
two truths? You’d conclude that Gary is mortal. Is that a legiti-
mate deduction? Yes, it is. Logic allows for that kind of connec-
tion between what we call “classes,” the class of men, the class of
mortals, and the individual class of Gary. The relationship goes
like this: All P is Q, all the D is P, and therefore all D is Q. It’s a
law of logic, categorical inference.
Now if we did not have laws of logic, if we relied only upon
one-time experiences isolated from each other, we would never
be able to advance our knowledge. We would never be able to

relate classes or propositions to each other. We could only know
momentary experiences. But because the laws of logic are valid,
we’re able to learn a lot about things we haven’t experienced. If
I know that all men are mortal and I know that Gary is a man,
then I don’t have to wait until Gary dies. I can tell you now that
he is mortal. It follows from the premises.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “Yes, but what if he doesn’t die?” Well,
then, if he doesn’t die, the proposition that all men are mortal isn’t
true. But if I know that all men are mortal—and God has told
us that that’s true—and we know that someone is a man, then
we also know that person will die. That person is mortal. That’s
following a law of logic and it’s known as deductive inference.
Another deductive inference goes like this: If P, then Q. The
next premise is P. The conclusion is Q. Every argument in that
form, without exception, is a valid argument. If the premises are
true—if “If P, then Q” is true, and if P is true—then Q must
also be true. This is standard deductive reasoning.
To do deduction, you need to be able to identify classes and
laws of thought—or, if you want to put it this way, relationships
between the classes and laws of logic. You can’t do deduction
without that ability, and without logic you can’t do any aca-
demic work or understand anything.
Now you’re talking to a materialistic atheist who says all of
reality is physical in nature. But if all of reality is physical in
nature, where is the class or what is the category of humanity? Is
that a physical thing? I’m not asking if humans are physical. Yes,
we are. But is the concept or class known as humanity physical?
No, it isn’t. And what about the class of mortal things? Is that
class physical? No.
When the unbeliever wants to do reasoning—let’s say math-

ematical reasoning—he says, “We know certain relationships,
such as 2 + 3 = 5.” But here’s a philosophical question: Is this
character on the page itself two? If it is, then we could just erase
it and there would be no more two in the universe. But of course,
that wasn’t two; that was just the numeral “2,” which is a repre-
sentation or an instantiation (or instance) of the concept of two.
Or think about it this way: Can you go to the refrigerator
and say, “I’m going to pull two out of the refrigerator tonight”?
Two what? Never mind that. Not two anything. Just two. “I’m
going to pull two out of the refrigerator.” Of course not. The
concept of two is not physical.
So here you have the unbeliever who is talking about an im-
material, non-physical set of things known as human beings
and an immaterial, non-physical set of things known as mor-
tals and an immaterial, non-physical twoness. And he’s using the
laws of logic, which are also not physical but conceptual.
I’ve belabored the point so you will understand what’s go-
ing to happen now. The last step is that you say to the atheist,
“Since for you everything that exists must be material or phys-
ical, then for you there can be no laws of logic or classes or
concepts. There can be no numbers. There can be no concept of
humanity. There can be no class of mortal beings. There can be
no laws of logic. And if there are no classes and no laws of logic,
there can be no deduction.”
THE PROBLEM OF MIND
We saw that the atheist can’t use inductive inference. But he

also can’t use deductive inference. Which is to say that he can’t
reason at all. But now, let’s talk about another problem, the
problem of mind. Remember, we’re dealing with a materialist
atheist. Does he think I have a mind or that he has a mind? Can
he—if he is consistent—hold that he has a mind?
People often interchange the words mind and brain, but
there is a difference. It makes sense to say that my brain is five
feet and ten inches off the floor, but it doesn’t make sense to say
that my mind is. There’s a difference between the mind and the
physical object, the gray matter, the brain.
Does what you think in your mind boil down to what takes
place in your brain? I’m not asking if there’s any relationship at
all. I’m asking if it can be reduced to what happens in your brain?
Is it even theoretically possible for a scientist to open my
cranium and do a complicated procedure on the gray matter in
there and say, “You were thinking of The Star-Spangled Banner
just a moment ago, weren’t you?” No, it isn’t, because we’re
talking about two things of a different order altogether. The
electrons and molecules and synapses and all of that in the brain
have nothing to do with the concept being transmitted over
those synapses and arcs and so forth. You cannot tell what a
person is thinking by dissecting the person’s brain. There’s a dif-
ference between mind and brain.
You cannot tell what a person is thinking

by dissecting the person’s brain. There’s a
difference between mind and brain.
But the atheist has to say that mind reduces to brain. The
brain is the mind. You don’t have any thinking process that is
part of your free investigation and choosing. You just have what
takes place as an electrochemical response in the gray matter
upstairs. That is the implication of his materialism. But if that
is true, then you don’t have any control over what you think.
In fact, some atheists would say, “Yes, that’s right. You don’t.
What you think is just a result of antecedent physical causes.” You
can run with that. Let them state their worldview and say, “Okay,
where does that take us?” If that’s true, then there’s no mind and
everything I think is reduced to electrochemical responses in the
brain. And then what I think, I didn’t choose to think. I couldn’t
prove what I’m thinking to be true, because I can’t help the elec-
trochemical responses to take place in my brain.
In other words, you say to the atheist, “If what you say is
true, then you have no reason for believing it to be true. Your
worldview undermines any confidence that you could possibly
have in your own worldview, because on your worldview ev-
erything that you’re saying about atheism is just the result of
electrochemical responses in your brain.”
“For all we know, the machinery upstairs in your head went
wacko. We won’t hold you responsible. You couldn’t help it. In
fact, no one can help what they think and what they say and
what they do, because there’s no mind and there’s no freedom
about it. It’s not as though you looked at all the options and
saw what you considered to be true and chose it. Your brain just
kind of cranked out the things that it did and sent the stimulus
down to your tongue and made you say the words you did.”
What I’m getting at is that if atheism is true, there could be
no reason to believe atheism is true, because if atheism is true,
then I have no mind. My brain just does what it does, and his
brain does what his does.
In fact, here’s a great comeback to an atheist who says,

“There’s no mind; it’s just brain.” You respond: “It doesn’t do
any good for you to try to convince me, because my brain just
says what it says, and your brain says what it says. There’s no
argument. If you’re right, Mr. Atheist, then we don’t even need
to debate this anymore, because there are no laws of logic, there
are no laws of science, and we don’t even have minds with which
to debate.”
This is why, in my debate with the atheist Gordon Stein, I
said, “In your worldview, there can be no laws of logic. Conse-
quently, the fact that you came to this debate proves my posi-
tion and disproves your position. You came to debate me, and
that means you assume there are laws of logic, which means you
assume that there is an immaterial reality—and that is contrary
to your atheism.”
THE PROBLEM OF MORAL ABSOLUTES
But there’s still another problem—the problem of moral abso-

lutes. We could talk about simple matters of morality, why any-
body should be decent to another person or why we shouldn’t
pillage or rape or murder, and all those sorts of things.
But one way to see this point is the example I used in my
debate with Dr. Stein. Suppose I was to take out a gun and say,
“Here’s how we settle debate questions. Give me an argument as
to why I shouldn’t shoot you.” He has two ways he can respond.
One is to give no argument but instead say, “There aren’t any
moral absolutes.” And if there are no moral absolutes, then it’s
perfectly all right to win a debate by shooting your opponent.
But if he thinks it’s wrong to try to win a debate in that way, if he
wants to say that murder is immoral, then he’s going to have to

tell me that there’s more to this universe than just matter, isn’t he?
He’s going to have to appeal to something beyond the ma-
terial cosmos. Ultimately, he would have to appeal to the per-
sonal God of creation, but for our argument here, he has to go
somewhere beyond the physical world to get a moral absolute
by which to condemn me for trying to shoot him to win the de-
bate. Every atheist you speak to is on the horns of that dilemma.
Similarly, when I had a dialogue with George Smith, another
well-known atheist, on the Jon Stewart Show, Mr. Smith wanted
to make the point that we should live by reason, not by faith.
We’ve already talked about the fact that if you don’t have faith
in a Creator God, there’s no place for reason at all. But I re-
sponded by saying, “I agree with you. I think we’re supposed to
follow reason. I know why, as a Christian, I tell people to be
reasonable. But I don’t know why you do. How can you, as an
atheist, tell people that they ought”—notice that word—“to be
reasonable? In an atheistic universe, people should be able to do
whatever they want.”
How can an atheist tell people that they ought

to be reasonable in a matter-only atheistic
universe? Why shouldn’t people be able to do
whatever they want?
The atheist cannot give a basis for moral absolutes. That isn’t
just a way to show that atheists must allow for sexual perversion,
abortion, murder, and all the rest. It’s also a way of showing that
the atheist can’t even do academic work.
In fact, we do find in university settings the falsification of

lab reports for the sake of getting funding to do work. People
are motivated by money or by fame to falsify reports in order
to make themselves out to be the first to have discovered some
new scientific theory. It’s embarrassing, because all the research
and the laboratory work done in the hard sciences assumes the
honesty of the researcher. It assumes that you’re going to make
an accurate report of what you found out from the white rats
you’ve been working with.
If you start changing the statistics to make it look as if your
hypothesis really was true, who’s going to come along and do
the months and months of research to find that you were lying?
Where are the checks and balances in a world where moral ab-
solutes can’t be accounted for in a matter-only cosmos given the
operating assumptions of the atheistic worldview?
If you were an atheist, you should say, “So what? It’s differ-
ent strokes for different folks. This is how I get my money. This
is how I get my fame. This is what makes me happy.” But the
embarrassment of the university, the embarrassment of the pro-
fessor, the embarrassment of a friend over the fact that scientists
sometimes lie shows that they believe there are moral absolutes.1
Those moral absolutes must be assumed in every depart-
ment. Let’s go over to the English department. Let’s say you
have an English teacher who has been promoting moral relativ-
1. One of the most recent examples of fraud is the bio-tech company Thera-
nos, a privately held health technology corporation that was “initially touted as a
breakthrough technology company but subsequently” became “infamous for its
false claims to have devised blood tests that only needed very small amounts of
blood. . . . On March 14, 2018, Elizabeth Holmes and former company president
Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani were charged with ‘massive fraud by the SEC.” There are
numerous examples of scientific misconduct incidents: http://bit.ly/2ukKVlK
ism in the literature she gives you and in the class discussions
and lectures. She wants you to imbibe what she’s teaching and
to realize that there are no moral absolutes.
But the day of the final exam comes—and I’d cheat, just to
play the devil’s advocate. I’d make it obvious. I wouldn’t just
kind of look at someone’s paper. I’d walk right over there and
say, “What’s the answer to number 12?”
What do you think your teacher would do? She’d say, “Greg,
you’re supposed to do your own work. I’m going to have to
disqualify this exam. You’re going to fail the class.” But I’d say,
“You hypocrite. You taught us all semester that there are no
moral absolutes. Who are you to condemn me? It’s different
strokes for different folks. I’ve decided to pass this class by using
his work. Who are you to tell me that I can’t do that?”
AT H E I S T S C A N N OT L I V E C O N S I S T E N T LY
A C C O R D I N G TO T H E I R W O R L D V I E W
When I was in college, it was during the last days of the coun-
terculture, Vietnam War protests, the sexual revolution, the late
1960s. I would go on secular campuses and try to witness and
talk to people about the Christian faith. I’d run into this combi-
nation of ideas repeatedly, and it would blow my mind.
I would be talking to a non-believer—let’s say a guy who is
living with his girlfriend—and I’d say how God condemns that
and how that guilt needs to be dealt with and how Jesus Christ
is the Savior and so forth. One way to get me off his back is for
him to say, “Different strokes for different folks. Moral relativ-
ism. It makes me happy. There are no absolutes. You can’t apply
that to me.”
But then, in the very same conversation, that person would

say, “The United States is unrighteous to be in Vietnam. We
need to protest and burn down banks and do things to get them
out of Vietnam.”
But how do you bring those two things together? It’s “dif-
ferent strokes for different folks” when it comes to your sexual
behavior, but it’s not “different strokes for different folks” when
it comes to military morality. But you can’t have it both ways.
Remember the illustration we used in the first chapter. The un-
believer has boarded a plane for Boston and wants to get out
at Chicago, but you’re going to say, “No one is getting off this
plane. You’ve determined your worldview destination and all
that comes with it. You can’t deplane just because you can’t ac-
count for intelligibility, consistency, and morality because your
worldview is faulty at its foundation.”
The materialistic atheist cannot do science anymore. He can-
not use logic anymore. He cannot presume that his mind or his
brain is trustworthy. He cannot argue that we must be honest in
our lab reports and when we do our final exams.
So what happens when you point out these problems, when
you destroy someone’s worldview and show that he can’t even
reason on the basis of it? Do they usually say that they get it
and declare they need to become a Christian? Do they say, “I’m
guilty before God. I’ve been fighting against all of this”?
Sometimes it happens. Sometimes people have been so pre-
pared by other tragedies or experiences in their lives that they
know there’s something terribly wrong, and this is what finally
tips it, and they say, “What do you think the answer is?” Some-
times, it ends well. But not usually. It’s important that you under-
stand that. Learning this technique for destroying the unbeliever’s
worldview should not lead you to think that you’re going to start
making conversions. It usually isn’t going to happen that way.
I hope that, by God’s grace, you do see people change. But it’s
not going to happen just because you’ve destroyed their world-
view internally. The next thing you’re going to see—and this is
where we’ll pick up in the next chapter—is that the unbeliever
will say, “That can’t be true. I understand why you say, theoret-
ically, that I can’t do science. But I do science, and all my unbe-
lieving friends do science. They make choices. They believe in
morality. What you say looks good on paper, but it just isn’t true.”
The next step in your apologetic—and this is where you are
going to be pushing where it hurts—is toward a conviction of
sin, showing the unbeliever that he does do science and use
logic and believe in moral absolutes and that proves he does
know God in his heart of hearts. What he’s been saying with
his mouth does not reflect what he believes in his heart. As Paul
says in Romans 1, he knows the truth but has been suppressing
it in unrighteousness.
This means we must talk about self-deception. The unbeliever
is caught in the condition of self-deception. He has convinced
himself that there is no God, that he doesn’t believe in God, when
in fact he really does—and refuses to give thanks and honor God
for who He is. But it’s one thing to destroy his worldview; it’s
another thing to convince him that he is naked before God, that
he is spiritually dead because of sin and in need of a Savior.
GLOSSARY
Categorical inference: A person makes a judgment about whether

something is or could be a member of a certain category.
Deductive inference: Relies on the laws of logic. When we de-

duce conclusions, we take the laws of logic and the truths
that we know, and we do operations upon these truths ac-
cording to the laws of logic and draw other conclusions.
Inductive inference: Takes something we have experienced in
the past and projects it into the future.
1. How does the problem of inductive inference undermine

materialistic atheism and make science impossible?
2. What is the difference between mind and brain?
3. Atheists don’t believe in moral absolutes. Does that hinder
them from doing academic work? Why or why not?
4. Learning how to undermine the unbeliever’s worldview will
lead to his or her conversion. Discuss.
5. The unbeliever knows in his heart that there is a God. What
does Romans 1:18–22 tell us about why he won’t acknowl-
edge and recognize that?
CHAPTER 9
THE UNBELIEVER
IS A BELIEVER
In the previous chapter, we started to go through three basic

ways that people try to develop a worldview to counter Christi-
anity. We focused on the first one, atheistic materialism. We’re
going to move on to deal with Platonic dualism and with vari-
ous religious worldviews. But there is more that we need to say
about responding to unbelief.
As we say, the argument in favor of the Christian worldview
is that without it you can’t prove anything. Now, that’s easy to
say. Someone might respond by saying, “But how do you know
that?” And your answer is that without the Christian world-
view, there’s no basis for scientific inference based on causality.
Without the Christian worldview, there is no basis for classes or
concepts or the laws of logic by which we reason deductively.
Without the Christian worldview, man does not have a mind
by which he can investigate options and choose the truth based
on evidence. He has only a brain controlled by electrochemical
165
processes, so he can’t help but say what he does. That is to say,

if the materialist is right, he has no reason to believe that he is
right. He just has a brain that forced him to say and to think
what he does.
Finally, without the Christian worldview, there could be
no moral absolutes—including even the moral absolute that
you shouldn’t cheat in your lab reports or statistics or that you
shouldn’t take out a gun and shoot your opponent to win an ar-
gument. Those behaviors cannot be excluded unless you have a
basis for moral absolutes, and the atheist has no basis for moral
absolutes. He might say, “If we don’t respect one another, if we
start shooting each other, just think how unhappy society will
be?” To which you can say, if you want to argue the point, “Yes,
society will be unhappy. But so what? Why am I under obliga-
tion to work for the happiness of society?”
But, as I said at the end of the previous chapter, when you
use arguments of this kind with an atheist or materialist, you
must not expect they will just say, “My worldview has been de-
stroyed, and I have to become a Christian.” Sometimes it may
happen like that. Usually, it won’t.
Now, let’s think about ways in which people try to avoid
the pain of the logical consequences of their worldview. These
are people—using the illustration from chapter 1—who have
boarded the plane for Boston and think they don’t have to go
all the way. They want to get off at Chicago. Now I’m going to
tell you how to guard the door and say, “Nope. No exit. No one
gets off at this point. You wanted to be on a plane called Hu-
man Autonomy, being a lord and law unto yourself. And you’re
going to go all the way, unless to turn to the only option there
is—Jesus Christ.”
The Unbeliever is a Believer 167
“THAT’S NOT AN IMPORTANT QUESTION.”
What are some of the strategies unbelievers often use? If it’s

a professor you’re talking to, the strategy will most likely be,
“That’s not an important question.” If you’re studying in an
area like literature, sociology, or physics, and you start throwing
these philosophical problems at your professor after class, most
likely he’s going to say, “That’s too philosophical for me. That’s
not important.”
By waving his hand and pronouncing it unimportant, does
the issue become unimportant? No. You can’t just say, “Don’t
bamboozle me. Answer the question or admit you’re wrong.”
But you do have to learn a technique that enables you to be firm
and insist on an issue without being disrespectful.
If he says it’s not important, I will say, “But how could we do
science without it? Maybe you’re right. Please help me see this.”
He may say, “Well, we are able to do science without answering
that question, because after all we are doing science, and I can’t
answer your question.” He will think that’s profound. He will
think that has settled the matter. “We don’t need to solve these
problems in order to do the work in our field.”
Before we go further, I’m going to complicate what I’ve
been teaching you by explaining that this unbeliever you’ve
been talking to—your professor, your roommate, a fellow stu-
dent, a friend, a business associate, your neighbor—is a be-
liever. The unbeliever is a believer. And because the unbeliever
is a believer, he will have a good point, in a sense, when he says,
“We don’t have to answer that question because we are able to
do science or study literature or do sociology without answer-
ing your question.”
There are three concepts we must understand before we

come back to the unbeliever being a believer. There is believing,
justifying a belief, and having a belief (or beliefs) about belief.
There is believing, justifying a belief, and

having a belief (or beliefs) about belief.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BELIEVING

AND BEING ABLE TO JUSTIFY A BELIEF
There’s a difference between believing something and being able

to justify that belief. I believe certain things about the health of
the human body. But if you were to push hard, you would find
that I don’t have enough information to be able to justify all
the beliefs that I have. In many cases, I would just fall back on,
“That’s what my doctor told me.” If I’m not able to justify my
belief, does that mean it’s not true? No. But I certainly can’t be
very persuasive if I’m not able to offer a justification.
What if I say, “I believe that it’s 96 degrees outside”? How
is that different from saying, “I know that it’s 96 degrees out-
side”? What is the difference between believing a proposition
and knowing a proposition? The answer is that knowledge is a
true belief. I can believe things that are false. I could believe that
I’m in Bend, Oregon, and that would be false.
But is every true belief a case of knowledge? I could believe
that the winning lottery number tonight will be 6-8-0-9-3.
Let’s say we wait to find out and the lottery number comes up
and—“I’ve won the lottery. That was the number!” Could I say,
“I knew it”? No. This is common English parlance, but it is not
a good philosophical analysis. Did I know it? No. Did I believe

it? I believed it enough to buy the ticket. Was it true? Yes. I
believed it. It was true. But did I know it? No. What did I lack?
Proof.
I lacked justification for my belief. When I know something,
I believe it. It’s true, and I have evidence for it. I can prove it or,
if you prefer, justify or account for it. Simply put, knowledge is
justified true belief. Not just true belief but justified true belief.
Simply put, knowledge is justified true belief.

Not just true belief but justified true belief.
Now, what kinds of things can I have beliefs about? Can I

have beliefs about aunts and uncles? About chemistry? About
pastry? About politics? About God? About sports?
Can I have beliefs about myself? That’s one of the most im-
portant areas of belief. The majority of the work pastors do
in counseling people comes down to what they believe about
themselves. I’m not into the “self-esteem is the answer to all
your problems” thing, but when you talk to people who are not
acting properly toward their children or when there are mar-
ital problems or when a person is depressed or whatever the
situation might be, often it has to do with what they believe
about themselves—sometimes favorably and sometimes not so
favorably. You may know people who believe that they are hot
stuff, and you would say there’s not a lot of evidence to justify
that belief.
People have beliefs about a lot of things. They have beliefs
about themselves. They also have beliefs about what they believe.
Imagine that someone is doing a survey on the street. You

walk out of the department store and he comes up to you. “Do
you believe that So-and-so should be the next President of the
United States?” And in a sense, what you do is ask yourself,
“What’s in the filing cabinet up here in my mind?” You open
the Politics drawer and you don’t find any belief that So-and-so
should be President, and so you report to the person doing the
survey: “No, I don’t believe so.”
What you did was consult yourself about what you think
you believe. You thought, “I don’t believe he should be the next
President of the United States,” and then you reported your
belief—as you understood it to be. For the most part, we don’t
think we have any problem identifying our beliefs. In fact, we
tend to think we are infallible about what we believe—not that
our beliefs themselves are infallible, but that we are infallible
about what we believe.
We think, “I can’t make mistakes about myself.” We often
operate on that assumption. Most people would be a little put
out if you were to suggest that they don’t know themselves that
well. But on the other hand, once we get away from the initial
impression that we are infallible about ourselves, I bet you can
identify a lot of things you’re not so sure you believe.
Let’s say I work in an office and the office manager starts
going on and on about racial equality, about how all races are
equal, and discrimination is horrible and so on. He tells you
how he goes out of his way to make sure that people of different
ethnic and racial backgrounds get promoted. If you asked him,
“Do you believe that people of all races are equal in dignity?”
He would almost certainly say, “Yes, I do.” And if you were to
say, “Are you sure you believe that?” He would probably get
insulted and say, “Of course! I know my beliefs better than any-
one else. Yes, I believe in racial equality.”
All of that seems very plain and simple. But now let me com-
plicate the story. You are a good friend of that office manager,
and so after work you go out to get a bite to eat and a few drinks
together at a local restaurant. There’s a lot of spare time you
spend with this guy, and it’s a pretty loose time, too. You notice
that when your friend gets a couple of beers in him he starts tell-
ing jokes—and he doesn’t hesitate to tell jokes that involve ra-
cial slurs and demeaning remarks come out of his mouth when
he sees people of other races enter the restaurant.
Now, does your friend, the office manager, believe in racial
equality? The first thing that might come to our mind is to say,
“The guy is a hypocrite!” He puts on a good show at work, but
then after work, at the bar, his real feelings come out. And that
is a possibility. That could be one explanation, but it’s not the
only possible explanation.
Here’s a parallel story to help make it easier to understand.
Imagine there’s a single mother, whose husband has died. She’s
left with one child, and all her joy and happiness and self-es-
teem in the world is tied up with that little boy. She lives her life
through Johnny.
But Johnny, her little angel, is a hellion at school. He gets
into trouble. It began with relatively innocent pranks, but now
it has escalated. He’s in third grade and he’s stealing lunch
money from the other kids at school. When he’s caught, the
teacher calls his mother to talk about her little angel, and she
says, “My child wouldn’t do such a thing.”
Let’s make it worse. Let’s say she just will not receive the
negative reports about her child and, of course, the child gets
worse. Now he’s in fifth grade and he’s not just beating up kids
and stealing their lunch money. He’s putting razor blades in
the apples they’re going to eat for lunch. Now the school says,
“We’ve had it. We’re not going to put up with this anymore.”
The principal calls in Mrs. Jones to explain that Johnny is
being expelled from school, and she puts up a fuss like you
wouldn’t believe, defending her son. He’s been framed! They’ve
had it in for Johnny for two years, ever since they started telling
those lies about him stealing lunch money. And on and on she
goes, doing this sort of thing in an attempt to exonerate her
son. Next time Johnny gets into trouble, she transfers him to
another school district. She won’t put up with this persecution
of her child anymore.
But there’s one more thing: As much as she praises her little
Johnny for being an angel and defends him against all this per-
secution and false accusation, she will never let her son be alone
with her purse.
Does Mrs. Jones believe in the innocence of her child? If you
say “Yes,” you’re wrong. If you say “No,” you’re wrong. What
you have in a case like this is a woman who has two beliefs.
What is the evidence that Mrs. Jones believes Johnny is
guilty? She protects her purse from him. She is not going to
let him get hold of her money, and so she must believe that
he is, in some sense, immoral. Did she admit that belief? Not
in words, but certainly in actions—and as the expression says,
actions speak louder than words. Sometimes actions are a very
good indicator of what people believe, even when they say they
don’t believe something. An atheist might say that there is no
such entity as good or evil (some do say this), but he or she cer-
tainly wants to be treated in an ethical way.
A BELIEF ABOUT
YO U R B E L I E F S
The second thing Mrs. Jones believes is this: She believes that
she does not believe Johnny is guilty. She has an iterated belief,
that is, a belief about her beliefs. We’re dealing with a higher
level now, not just the ordinary beliefs about race relations,
sports, Johnny, and all the rest. Now she’s looking at herself, in
a sense, opening the file drawer, examining her beliefs. What
does she find when she looks at her beliefs? She believes that she
does not believe that Johnny is bad.
Does she have good reason to believe that she doesn’t be-
lieve that? Sure, she does. There are all kinds of evidence that
she thinks Johnny is an angel. After all, she defends him. She’ll
transfer school districts, if need be, to protect his integrity and
his reputation.
This kind of thing happens all too often, and not just with
parents and their children. It happens with people who think
they believe in racial integration and then are caught with their
actions speaking louder than words—and it turns out that they
don’t really believe in that.
This is a general truth about human nature. Though we
think we are infallible about what we believe, we aren’t. In some
psychologically high-stress or high-intensity situations, we are
often prone to be wrong about what we believe, because we’ve
been told that the really progressive or politically correct thing
is to believe something and yet in our heart of hearts we don’t
believe it. But we put on the outward show and we want to con-
vince ourselves that that’s who we are, even though we aren’t.
People can be wrong about what they actually believe.
Now let’s go back to our atheist professor. Suppose he’s a

professor of chemistry. You’ve been asking him questions and
he gets frustrated. He can’t answer your questions about moral-
ity and the possibility of doing science and so on, and he says,
“Look, I don’t know why nature is uniform. I’m not even sure
I can justify that belief. But I don’t need to, because we’re doing
science. We’re doing chemistry and I can’t answer your question,
so you must be wrong. You don’t have to know why nature is
uniform in order to do chemistry.”
Remember the distinction we started out with, the distinc-
tion between beliefs and justifications for them. Now, do I act
only based on the beliefs I can justify, or do I act on my beliefs?
Imagine a child jumping out of bed when he hears thunder and
crawling under the bed. You come in and ask why he did that,
and the child tells you there are terrible things out there in the
dark. Can the child justify that belief? No. But did the child
hesitate to act on that belief? No. And most people don’t.
Most people don’t say, “I’m going to wait until I can be ab-
solutely sure of everything, and then I’ll start acting.” We act on
our beliefs, proven and unproven.
IT’S ALL ABOUT JUSTIFYING A BELIEF
When you ask your atheist chemistry professor about the prob-
lem of scientific induction and how he can justify that on an
atheist worldview, and he says, “I don’t know how to justify it.
But I’ve been acting on the belief that nature is uniform and
therefore I don’t need to justify it,” is he making sense?
No. In fact, that’s a red herring, distracting you from what
he’s doing. He’s answering a different question altogether. It has
nothing to do with what we’re talking about, and you need to

learn to say that, very politely, to bring all of this down to the
point: “Professor, I didn’t doubt that you believed in the unifor-
mity of nature. I asked how you justify it.”
When an unbeliever cannot justify his beliefs, he’s being ar-
bitrary. What are the two major “sins” intellectually? Arbitrari-
ness and inconsistency.
When an unbeliever cannot justify his beliefs, he’s

being arbitrary. What are the two major “sins”
intellectually? Arbitrariness and inconsistency.
But we need to go further. Important as it is to point out this

arbitrariness, it is far more important to drive home to the unbe-
liever’s heart, not just that he believes something he can’t justify, but
that he believes it because—as the Bible says—he believes in God.
You can say to your professor, “It’s obvious from your actions
that you believe in the uniformity of nature. It’s obvious from
your actions that you believe in logic and in classes and con-
cepts and in deductive logic. It’s obvious from your actions that
you believe your mind is not just brain tissue. It’s obvious from
your actions that you believe in moral absolutes. How can we
account for all these things that you do?”
The answer is in Romans 1:18 and its clear statement that ev-
eryone knows God: “Here’s what the Bible says about why you’re
acting this way: You know the truth and you are suppressing it
in unrighteousness.” I’m not suggesting that you always must
quote that verse or even that you necessarily must quote a verse
at this point. But this is what you want to present to him or her.
Do you think he’s going to like that? After all, what you’ve
said about him puts him in a bad light. But you shouldn’t back
down. That’s what apologetics is all about, showing the disrepu-
table reasoning process of an unbeliever. Should preachers stop
saying disreputable things about people so they might come to
trust in the gospel? Will people trust in the gospel unless they
understand that they are disreputable? Of course, they won’t.
They must understand that they are in rebellion against God. A
man who thinks he’s healthy doesn’t look for a physician.
Your professor is intellectually disreputable. He knows things
and acts on things. His very behavior shows that he believes
these things, and yet he will not admit it. He suppresses what he
knows in unrighteousness. And when you point that out, he’s
either going to have to come up with a justification or he’s going
to have to go home and think long and hard about what you’ve
said to him—and that’s up to God.
Your professor may have won prizes in chemistry because
he’s so smart. But the fact that he has all those prizes would
not give him an answer to your question, would it? The little
boy who saw the emperor in his underwear in the parade was
probably not well-liked for telling the truth. The fact that your
professor may not like you and that what you’ve said makes him
uncomfortable should not change what you tell him. And that’s
true if it’s your roommate or someone else at the university in-
stead of a professor.
THE PROBLEM OF SELF-DECEPTION
It’s not just that unbelievers are intellectually barren and cannot
provide reasons for their belief in logic and science and moral-
ity. It’s that they are deceived, self-deceived. And self-deception

is crucial to understanding Christian apologetics.1
When you’re dealing with someone who is deceived—and is
deceived because he himself is doing the deceiving—you must
not have the idea that if you go through the philosophical puz-
zles, he’ll have to admit he’s wrong. If you were dealing with a
computer, it might be that simple. But you’re dealing with a
person who is running away from God.
How badly do some people want to run away from God? Some
people will give up their intellect rather than admit that they’ve
been rebelling against God. That’s not the sort of thing you or-
dinarily see. After all, most people aren’t pressed to see that they
can’t be reasonable without a Christian worldview. But from time
to time, there are unbelievers who come up against the implica-
tions of unbelief and finally say, “Okay, that’s it. I’ll be irrational.”
Let me give you an example from the field of literary
criticism, where the reigning school of thought was once
deconstructionism. One of the great proponents of decon-
structionism was Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Derrida said
every reading of a text is a misreading of the text, because it
is impossible to get back to the original intent of the author.
Therefore, all literary interpretation is really you bringing your
own ideas to a text. There’s no way to get to the bottom of what
a text really means. Every reading is a misreading.
Why was Derrida forced to that irrational position in liter-
ary criticism? Because as Derrida thought more about literary
1. Greg L. Bahnsen, “The Crucial Concept of Self-Deception in Presupposi-

tional Apologetics,” Westminster Theological Journal, vol. 57 (1995), 1–31. Based
on Dr. Bahnsen’s 1978 doctoral dissertation, A Conditional Resolution of the Ap-
parent Paradox of Self-Deception (University of Southern California).
interpretation and what’s involved in the analysis of what an-

other person has to say, he had to face the fact that, if he believes
in literary interpretation, there must be unchanging absolutes.
But on his existentialist worldview, there are no absolutes. It’s
not just that there are no moral absolutes; there can’t be un-
changing absolutes in language either or in human nature or in
historical criticism.
In deconstructionism, every reading of a

text is a misreading of the text, because it is
impossible to get back to the original intent of
the author. Therefore, all literary interpretation
is really you bringing your own ideas to a text.
If you can’t study the historical background, and if you can’t

be sure of the meaning of the terms, and if you don’t know hu-
man nature to be absolutely constant, then how can you be sure
what this author is saying? You can read the author this way.
You can read the author that way. And therefore, every reading
is a misreading.
The reason I bring up deconstructionism, as far as I can
see, the deconstructionists were not driven to this conclusion
because they had good presuppositional apologists living next
door to them and putting the heat on them. They weren’t being
pressed—but, of course, they were in one sense. We sometimes
speak of the “hound of heaven” pressing people, that is, God
following “the fleeing soul by His Divine grace.”
I don’t know whether this might lead to their ultimate con-
version, but they could not come up against God’s world, the
world of language and meaning and so forth, and be consis-

tent. Realizing they were being inconsistent, they said, “Okay,
then there is no meaning.” What happens to language if there
is no meaning and every reading is a misreading? Language
becomes a subjective tool and no longer what we usually call
language.
G I V I N G U P R AT I O N A L I T Y T O M A I N TA I N
AN INCONSISTENT WORLDVIEW
What I’m getting at is that sometimes people will give up their

rationality rather than give in to the Lord Jesus Christ and to
the revelation of God that’s all around them. You will find peo-
ple who, when you talk to them and push them about their
rationality, their science, their moral absolutes, and they can’t
give a justification, rather than turn to the only viable option,
will say, “Okay, then I’ll take the plane to Boston. If what you
are saying is that my unbelief drives me to irrationality, then to
irrationality I will go.”
I have sometimes spoken to a Hare Krishna devotee. The
Hare Krishna tells me that my problem is that I’m on this wheel
of life and I’m still thinking in terms of distinctions. I have this
Western mentality and I’m oppressed by that. I need to realize
that all is one and there are no distinctions. If I don’t get that
enlightenment, I’ll never get off the wheel of life and finally get
to Nirvana.
“Tell me a bit about Nirvana,” I say. “I might like to go there.”
“Well, in Nirvana—as in that quotation from the Bhaga-
vad Gita I gave you—the drop of water falls into the shoreless
ocean. All is one. There are no distinctions in Nirvana. Because
we haven’t arrived in Nirvana, we are now living in the realm

of maya, the realm of illusion, the illusion that you are different
from me and that your wallet is different from my wallet and
that the trees and the oceans and all of that are separate beings.
Don’t you realize that we are one with nature and nature is one
with us and there are actually no distinctions at all? There is
ultimately no distinction between good and evil either.”
That’s what the person tells me in the airport as I wait for my
plane. But I have one more question, one thing I haven’t figured
out. “You said the problem with me is that I haven’t arrived at
Nirvana because I still believe in distinctions between myself
and the trees and the oceans and all of that.”
“Yes, that’s right. You’ve been listening well.”
“So then I’m not in Nirvana now?
“No, you’re not in Nirvana now. You’re in sad shape, heading
for aardvarkness or duckness when you’re reincarnated.”
“Based on your worldview, if I understand you correctly,
there are no distinctions ultimately. But then there can’t be
any distinction between where I am and Nirvana either, can
there? So on your worldview, I don’t need to do the medita-
tion or worry about the wheel of life because I’m already in
Nirvana.”
How does he respond? Does he say, “I have to look for a dif-
ferent religion?” Sometimes, by God’s grace. But often a person
trained in Eastern philosophy will say, “There you go with your
Western logic.” He’s caught in a contradiction, and his way of
squeezing out of the inconsistency of his worldview dilemma is
to say, “Logic is not important. You’re a Westerner, using logic
on me is like a trick, but I know better than that because we’ve
been taught that all is one and logic is misleading.” That’s an-
other case of a person who ends up saying, “I’ll give up rational-

ity rather than admit that I’m wrong.”
“I’ve really got to get to my plane,” I say to the Hare Krishna
devotee. “But what you’re saying is that you reject logic. Is that
right?”
“Yes,” he says. “I reject logic. That’s Western. I have an East-
ern mindset.”
I have two responses for this type of thinking. If I have time
before the plane comes, I’ll give them both. Here’s one of them.
“You reject logic? Well, then you don’t. Meditate on that one.”
Do you know what I’m getting at? A man who says, “I reject
logic” has no right to demand logical consistency. If he rejects
logic, it’s not the case that he rejects logic. The minute he rejects
logic, he can’t argue with me anymore. It means that I can say
anything I want. I can say that if he does reject logic, then he
doesn’t.
That’s not just a little joke. I’m telling him this seriously. You
can’t escape the demands of logic because you can’t escape living
in God’s universe and being God’s child—and you’re going to
have to answer to your heavenly Father someday.
That’s one response. The other response is more sociological
and very simple. When he says he rejects logic, I can say, “Then
please speak up in the microphone. Let everybody know that.”
If you’re not going to come to Jesus Christ as your true Lord,2 if
you’re not going to bend the knee here, then I want you to testify
to God’s goodness and truth by telling the world that the only
way you can avoid becoming a Christian is by rejecting logic.
2. George Harrison of the musical group The Beatles wrote “My Sweet Lord”
(1970). Harrison was not singing about Jesus as Lord but to the false Hindu god
Krishna as lord.
GLOSSARY
Iterated belief: A belief about a person’s beliefs.

Deconstructionism: Every reading of a text is a misreading of
the text, because it is impossible to get back to the original
intent of the author. Therefore, all literary interpretation is
really the person doing the reading bringing his or her own
ideas to a text.
Red herring: An informal fallacy that is used to distract the ar-
guer by diverting “attention from the issue at hand by point-
ing to an unrelated yet strongly compelling line of thought.”
The descriptive name comes from a popular story of using a
strong-smelling fish to divert a hunting dog’s attention from
chasing the wrong quarry.
1. “Knowledge is justified true belief.” Discuss.

2. Explain how apologetics is all about revealing the unbeliev-
er’s disreputable reasoning process.
3. Jacques Derrida says that all literary interpretation is every
reader bringing his own ideas to a text. How did he reach
that irrational conclusion?
4. Someone who rejects logic has no right to demand logical
consistency. Why?
5. An unbelieving professor tells you that he believes in the
uniformity of nature even though he can’t justify it—he just
“accepts” it. Based on Romans 1:18-20, does he believe in
God even though he denies it? Discuss.
CHAPTER 10
A QUICK COURSE
IN COMPARATIVE
RELIGION
In the previous chapter, we talked about atheistic materialism.

But that is not the only option out there. In many cases, the
tools I have given you to deal with atheistic materialism will
also be helpful in doing apologetics with people who hold other
worldviews. But in order to make this of maximum benefit to
you, I will put aside those arguments about morality and irra-
tionality and so on. We will continue with the same technique
but with different questions and different problems as we ap-
proach these other worldview options.
BELIEVERS IN A “NON-PHYSICAL REALM”
The atheist has a materialistic worldview. But now let’s talk

about any kind of philosophy that says, “We believe in mind
183
and body.” This worldview believes that there is not only a phys-
ical universe but also that there is a realm of ideas or a mental
realm or a spiritual realm of some sort—not spiritual in a “reli-
gious” sense, but in the sense of being non-physical. We’ll deal
with religions as our third option, but here we are talking about
a secular philosophy that believes in a physical domain and a
non-physical domain.
We’ve discussed Plato a bit already. Plato did not believe that
the physical world was ultimate reality. In fact, he thought that
it was at best the secondary reality. The physical world is always
changing and therefore it cannot be the object of knowledge,
for whatever it is that we know, it is unchanging. The object
of knowledge, Plato says, is not in flux. But since this world is
always changing, then the ultimate object of knowledge cannot
be this world. It must be another world, one that isn’t like this
changing world of time and space
Remember what we said earlier about two. If I write the
numeral 2 here on the page, that isn’t two. It’s only a numerical
symbol that represents two. Two itself can’t be found in this
world. It’s not a thing that you can stub your toe on. Two is of
a different order.
So is the concept of humanity. Humanity doesn’t exist in this
world, though humans do. Duckness doesn’t exist in this world,
but ducks do.
What Plato said is that there must be a realm for all these
ideas, the idea of two, the idea of human, the idea of duck. Now
there was a little inconsistency in Plato’s thought that’s kind of
humorous. Plato was embarrassed to say that there was a form
or idea for some things. He didn’t think there was a form of hair
or warts or poop. He thought there was no need for a form for
A Quick Course in Comparative Religion 185
those things. But for all the noble concepts such as goodness,
justice, beauty, truth, duck, giraffe, human, there is a realm of
ideas where they are found.
In this world, then, we find Huey, Dewey, and Louie out
on the pond and duckness in heaven above—though that’s not
accurate because saying “heaven” makes it sound religious, and
it really wasn’t religious. Instead, it was a realm of ideas distinct
from the particular instances of these various things that we
encounter in this world.
We’re going to move on to refute Plato but be aware that
there are many people who would not call themselves “Pla-
tonists” but who have the same basic problem. They want to say
that there is this physical cosmos, matter in motion. But then
they also want to believe in something like love or justice or fair
play. They may not be as sophisticated as Plato in developing
this realm of the forms and the relationship between the forms
and things in this world.
Under the skin, they are philosophical brothers of Plato.
But though there are other versions of idealism, the most rig-
orous version in the history of Western thought is Plato’s. So if
we can deal with him—the toughest guy on the philosophical
block as it were—then we should be able to deal with the other
ones too.
Plato says that there is a realm of duckness and horseness and
justice and love and triangularity. In fact, everything you can
think about—unless it’s disreputable, like warts—has a form in
that realm. But in this world of time and space, we find partic-
ulars, three particular ducks—Huey, Dewey, and Louie out on
the pond. Particulars are in this world and universals are in the
realm of forms or ideas.
H O W D O YO U K N O W ?
Now what question would we be inclined to ask Plato? You al-

ways want to ask, “How do you know?” How does Plato know
that there is another realm? In fact, Plato works right into the
apologist’s hands at this point, because his answer—unlike what
other less-sophisticated people might say—would be, “I’ve
never seen that other realm, because it is not open to the senses.
But there must be such a realm. It’s a rational necessity. If there
is no other realm like that, then we cannot make sense of our
experience.”
The first person who refuted Plato was his own

best student, Aristotle. His response was along
these lines: “What good is an unchanging
form outside of this world?”
The first person who refuted Plato was his own best student,
Aristotle. His response was along these lines: “What good is an
unchanging form outside of this world?” We never encounter
these forms, these ideas. So how can they help us explain any-
thing? In particular, how can they explain motion? The most
pervasive characteristic of the world in which we live is motion,
but in the realm of ideas you have these unchanging blocks, as
it were, of triangularity and love and justice. How do they help
us explain what happens in this world?
In a sense, Aristotle was the first person to say that someone
was so heavenly-minded he was of no earthly good. On Plato’s
philosophy, there are laws of logic, laws of morality, unchanging
moral values, goodness and justice and so on—but they don’t

have any relationship to this world. How did Plato think they
related to the world of time and space? He said, “The things of
this world participate in their form.”
The best Plato could do to explain this is to describe it as
being like different actors participating in a role. All the ducks
in the world are, as it were, trying out for duckness. They’re all
playing the part of duckness. There are many actors, but only one
role. To explain the nature of reality, he resorts to a metaphor.
But how do the forms end up informing the material world?
The ducks, after all, are made from matter. You might think
about it this way: Your mother is making cookies and she rolls
out the dough. She has a little duck-shaped cookie cutter and
comes along and imposes the cookie cutter on the dough. Now
we have three duck-like cookies. But what if your mother never
brought the cookie cutter and the dough together? Would we
ever get any ducks—or duck-shaped cookies? No.
Plato can’t just say that there’s another realm of ideas, like
justice and duckness and so forth. He must bring that realm
of ideas into contact with the physical world in which we live.
Plato knew that. And when he was pushed on how the forms
inform the physical world, he said he didn’t know and had to
resort to a myth, a story he didn’t even believe was literally true.
He said that the Demiurge imposed the forms on the material
world many years ago.
The greatest idealist philosopher in the history of Western
thought didn’t know how his forms and the particulars in this
world relate. But you cannot have a worldview that arbitrarily
says, “It’s kind of like different actors playing a single role or like
the Demiurge making cookies.”
ARISTOTLE’S RETURN
T O M AT E R I A L I S M
That doesn’t work philosophically, and that’s why his greatest

student, Aristotle, went a completely different direction. Aristo-
tle said, “I don’t care about anything that exists outside of space
and time. The only thing that is going to be helpful to us are the
things that do exist in space and time.” Then, of course, we’ve
returned to materialism; though Aristotle was technically not
an atheist. Even so, his materialism is tantamount to atheism,
and you can start dealing with it along those lines.
Aristotle realized that Plato’s attempt to

bring ideas or class concepts or laws into his
explanations could not be justified.
Aristotle realized that Plato’s attempt to bring ideas or class

concepts or laws into his explanations could not be justified.
He could believe it, but he couldn’t justify it—and therefore he
couldn’t know it. As we said in the previous chapter, to know
something, you must have a justified true belief.
People who are idealists in the typical American sense are
not Platonists, but they believe in the ideals of good will and
justice and love and fair play and so forth. When you present
your apologetic methodology against materialism, they’ll prob-
ably tell you, “No, I do believe in moral absolutes.” They might
even say that they believe in God, and we’ll deal with that be-
low. But they might say, “There is no God, but I do believe in
justice.”
What you’re going to do is ask them, from within their

worldview, how justice can be absolute? In their worldview, ev-
erything is changing. Everything is subjective. There can’t be
any objective, absolute notion of justice that can be applied.
And if there’s no justice, then the world isn’t going to be a very
happy place.
But there are no ideals or ideas that they can justify. If they
say, “No, I really think they exist,” you’re going to say, “Where?
How do they exist? Where do they come from?”
Sometimes they may brush aside these questions and say,
“Well, I don’t know where they come from, but it’s not import-
ant.” Your best question to them is this: “What’s the relation-
ship between your ideals and this world in which we live?”
That is the problem Plato couldn’t answer. It’s a problem that
no idealist can answer. Idealists are dualists who believe in two
types of reality, and the question they are always going to have
to face is how to bring the two types of reality into relationship
with each other.
Now someone else may say, “I do have an answer to that. I
have ideals, I have law, I have moral absolutes, and I have them
because I’m an adherent of another kind of religion. There goes
your worldview apologetic. It works for atheists. It’s great for
secular dualists. But it won’t touch me.”
TRANSCENDENT MYSTICISM
AND IMMANENT MORALISM
Here’s a quick course in comparative religion. There are three

basic kinds of religious philosophies. There may be other ways
of slicing the cake, but this one works well.
First, there are religions of transcendent mysticism. Reli-

gions of this sort place an emphasis on what goes beyond man’s
experience. These are transcendent religions and they are mysti-
cal in their outlook. That is, they eventually give up rationality
and say that what governs religion is some kind of internal intu-
ition or enlightenment or experience.
Transcendent mysticism is a religious philos-

ophy that places an emphasis on what goes
beyond man’s experience.
The opposite of that are religions of immanent moralism.

In these religions, the stress is not upon what transcends man’s
experience, but rather on what’s near at hand—the immanent,
close at hand, nearby. Some of these religions are actually athe-
istic, like Buddhism. They reject any transcendent reality. But
their stress, whether they are atheistic or not, is on a god or
religious forces that are close at hand—not outside the cosmos
(transcendent) or outside our experience but very much part of
our experience.
For that reason, they tend to become religions that are mor-
alistic rather than mystical. Instead of stressing inner enlighten-
ment, intuition, irrational concepts, or some form of mystical
contact with God, they stress a mystical or ethical code that
must be lived out. It remains, to ask, what is the source of what
constitutes their ethical code?
A good example is Confucianism. Confucianism involves
following the teachings of the master. What’s the source of the
master’s teaching?
BIBLICAL COUNTERFEITS
Then there are other religions that are biblical counterfeits.

These are religions that have been influenced in one way or
another by the Bible or are conceptually very much like the
biblical approach to God but still are counterfeits. They have
perverted the true revelation of God in some way. There are
three subdivisions in this category that I think would be helpful
for you to remember. These religions tend to be polytheistic,
unitarian, or pseudo-messianic.
First, polytheistic (poly/many + theistic/god = many gods).
These religions have a biblical-like view of God—not at all the
biblical view, but they have picked up some things from the
Bible, even though they believe there are many gods. The Mor-
mons, for instance, talk about God in ways that have connec-
tions with Christianity, and yet they believe there are many gods.
There are also unitarian biblical perversions, religions that
have a somewhat biblical-like view of God but do not believe
in the Trinity. Instead, they believe there is only one person that
is God. Islam is one such religion. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are
another. There are also the United Pentecostals.
The pseudo-messianic biblical counterfeits have false sav-
iors. They have a leader whom they put in the place of Jesus.
One of the most notorious examples was the late Sun Myung
Moon who claimed to be the third Messiah who takes the place
of the failed second Messiah, Jesus.
We have these different approaches to worldviews. Atheistic
materialism says there is only one kind of thing and it’s physical.
Platonic dualism says there are two kinds of things, body and
soul, ideas as well as the physical world. And now we have these
religious worldviews of which there are three kinds: ones that

say the emphasis should be on what transcends man’s experi-
ence, ones that focus solely on man’s experience and ethics, and
ones that in some way are aping the Bible—and of those there
are three kinds, polytheistic, unitarian, and pseudo-messianic.
The pseudo-messianic biblical counterfeits

have false saviors. They have a leader whom
they put in the place of Jesus.
If you know how to deal with each one of these categories,

you will be set free from the bondage many apologists find
themselves in, where they have to master all the details of all the
religions and philosophies before they can adequately defend
the faith. If you understand the basic possibilities and catego-
ries, then whatever comes along you can keep your opponent
talking and he’ll end up tripping himself up because you know
the right questions to ask.
I’m going to run quickly through these religious options and
take one example and show the refutation of it.
HINDUISM
First, Hinduism is the outstanding example of a religion of tran-

scendent mysticism in the history of the world. As we’ve men-
tioned before, Hindus believe that this world is illusion. We’re
all trying to get to Nirvana, but we can get there only if we
meditate and get off the wheel of life. In this world, we’re all
building up karma, but some of us are building up bad karma.
After this life is over, our karma—good or bad—will determine

whether we come back as an aardvark or a Brahma bull or fi-
nally get to enter the shoreless ocean and be spliced back into
the oneness of all things.
We’ve already discussed this, but let’s review. Hare Krishna—
though they might not want to admit it—is really a variant of
Hinduism, and the way that we approached the Hare Krishna
follower in the previous chapter is also the way that the Hindu
can be refuted. If there are no distinctions, if all really is one,
then on that worldview, I am already in Nirvana. But if Nirvana
is different from this world, then there must be distinctions. He
must either give up Hare Krishna—or Hinduism—or give up
logic. But let me add a couple of things to what we said there.
Whenever someone comes to you peddling a

religious point of view, what do you need to
keep asking? “How do you know?”
Whenever someone comes to you peddling a religious point

of view, what do you need to keep asking? “How do you know?”
The temptation is to think that if you press the Hindu by asking
“How do you know?,” he’s going to say, “It’s in the Bhagavad
Gita,” in the same way that if someone asks me, “How do you
know that Jesus is the Son of God?” I will appeal to the Bible. I
have the Bible, they have the Bhagavad Gita, and it’s a stand-off
that can’t be resolved.
The first thing you need to know about Hinduism is that it
is not a scriptural religion. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have
its sacred writings, but the Bhagavad Gita does not function for
the Hindu in the way the Bible does for the evangelical Chris-
tian. Hindus do not derive their moral norms or resolve their
disputes by appealing to the text of their sacred scripture. The
Bhagavad Gita does give a sort of literary launching for anyone
who has received enlightenment, but it is not a rational verbal
authority in the way the Bible is.
But even if it were, what would be your next question? If
someone says, “It’s in the Bhagavad Gita,” you are going to say,
“But why do you believe in the Bhagavad Gita?” Perhaps the
Hindu says, “Well, why do you believe the Bible?” Your answer is,
“Because without the biblical worldview, there isn’t a basis for be-
lieving anything.” But the Hindu says, “No, I do have a basis for
believing.” You can then ask him to open the Bhagavad Gita and
justify the laws of logic or scientific inference or moral absolutes
from it. That’s going to be hard to do, since the Bhagavad Gita
teaches that there is no true distinction between good and evil.
Here’s something that’s important to understand. Sometimes
people get a sampling of what presuppositionalism is and then
they think, “That’s easy to refute. Anybody that’s got a religious
book can say what you are saying.” But they haven’t understood
presuppositionalism. We aren’t saying, “We’ve got our book and
it’s better than yours.” That’s not our apologetic. Our apologetic
is that God has revealed Himself. He is the ultimate authority;
therefore, we believe on the basis of His Word, and if you do
not, then you are reduced to foolishness. “Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age?,” Paul asks. “Hasn’t God made
foolish the wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. 1:20–21)?
The other thing people sometimes think is that if it’s a reli-
gious worldview, then it plays by different rules. But it doesn’t.
When the religious worldview is presented, you can strip off the
fact that it’s religious. As far as you are concerned, it’s a world-
view, and you can do the same internal critique and ask the
same tough questions. When you do, you will find that people
do not have an out by appealing to the Bhagavad Gita.
BUDDHISM
What about religions of immanent moralism? A leading exam-

ple of a religion of immanent moralism would be Buddhism.
The founder of Buddhism, Gautama Siddhartha, grew up in a
Hindu environment. He was led to renounce a life of luxury.
He renounced the world, and then saw a vision of four passing
sights. According to Buddhist tradition, he saw an old man, a
sick man, a dead man, and a shaven monk. This led him to join
an ascetic Hindu cult where he almost beat himself to death.
Then he decided to find the meaning of suffering and how to
avoid it. This is how he discovered the Middle Way, the middle
way between pleasure and suffering. This enlightenment came
to him under a fig tree where, he says, Mara, the evil one of
Hinduism, was tempting him. He overcame that temptation
and so became the enlightened one, which is what “Buddha”
means, and went into a rapturous state for 49 days.
Now according to Buddha, there’s something wrong with
humanity, namely, that there’s a lot of suffering. Buddha said, “I
don’t want you to believe what I’m going to tell you because I’m
saying it. I want you to believe it because you experience it.”
Right away, he has made this a religion of immanent moralism.
It’s immanent because he says, “You’re not to accept any outside
authority. Don’t accept it because the gods say it; there are no
gods. Don’t accept it because I say it. I don’t have any authority.
Accept it only because it’s part of your experience.” Buddhism

denies the supernatural. It is atheistic. And it’s a religion of per-
sonal experience. Primarily, it stresses having experiences that
will eliminate suffering.
Where does suffering come from in Buddhism?

It comes from man’s desire.
Where does suffering come from? It comes from man’s desire.

The Buddhist view is similar, then, to Stoicism. The Stoic says,
“The reason you get uptight and frustrated is because you’re
going against the flow.” You’re on the freeway and it’s bumper-
to-bumper traffic and your blood pressure goes up because you
want to get to the concert on time, but you need to stop having
the desire to get to the concert on time and then there won’t be
any frustration.
Similarly, Buddha said, “If there weren’t human desires, there
wouldn’t be any human suffering.” You can eliminate the prob-
lem by not desiring anything. “Suffering will cease when desire
ceases,” he said. The goal is perfect detachment. You will be per-
fectly detached from the world if you follow the Eightfold Path.
Notice the moralistic cast of this religion: you must do this
and not do that. You must be free from lust. You must use the
right speech. Your conduct must be charitable. Don’t kill any-
thing. You must have the right kind of livelihood, one that pro-
motes life. You must express the will to overcome evil. You must
be aware that the body is loathsome. You must meditate correctly.
How do you deal with a religion of immanent moralism?
Someone tells you, “You really need to get into Zen.” “Okay,
what do I do?” “Well, there are things you mustn’t do and things
you must do. It’s important that you meditate. In fact, it’s best
if you meditate on these koans,1 like ‘What is the sound of one
hand clapping?’”
What are you going to say? “Who says so?” If the answer
is “Buddha, the enlightened one, said so,” you already know
what to say: “Buddha said not to believe it on the basis that he
said it.” Why believe the Zen master? According to Buddha, we
are not supposed to believe any authorities; we’re supposed to
experience it.
Now the Buddhist apologists are saying, “Okay, then you
should believe it because you experience it.” But you haven’t
experienced it. “Well, then you should experience it.” But why?
That’s what you’re trying to find out: Why should you experi-
ence it? Maybe you wouldn’t like it. The Buddhist is asking you
to turn off your brain and have an experience. His kind of med-
itation, in fact, is aimed at mindlessness, perfect detachment,
no desire, no thought, and therefore no suffering.
But the problem is not just that Buddhism is arbitrary: “Do it
because the Buddha said it.” After all, if a Buddhist said, “Here’s
how you should live your life,” you’d expect a Confucianist to
say, “No, Confucius said to do this.” Who are we going to fol-
low? And then there’s the Taoist and the Shintoist, too. When
we start with immanent moralism, we have lost our religious
authority. It becomes arbitrary.
But it’s also inconsistent, full of internal contradictions.
Buddha said, “Man does not have a soul. There is no soul in
man, but we must be careful not to build up bad karma.” But
1. “A koan is a riddle or puzzle that Zen Buddhists use during meditation to

help them unravel greater truths about the world and about themselves.”
how can there be bad karma if there’s no soul that’s going to be

passed on? Buddha responds by taking the Platonic route and
appealing to metaphor and myth: “It’s like the flickering candle
that passes its flame to another candle.”
But is that flame me? No, it’s not, because there is no soul
that’s passed on. But I am passing on my bad karma to some-
body. Do you know what that would lead me to do? Eat, drink,
and be merry, because tomorrow somebody is going to pay the
price. If my bad karma is going somewhere else, then what do I
care about it being bad karma?
All religions of immanent moralism run into that same kind
of difficulty. They cannot give an authoritative reason for living
the way we are supposed to live. And they involve inconsisten-
cies, as well.
What about the biblical counterfeits? We’ll save them for the
next chapter.
GLOSSARY
Demiurge: Not a god who interacts with its creation but an

undefined being responsible for the creation of the universe.
In Platonic philosophy the Craftsman (the meaning of De-
miurge) or Creator of the world.
Idealism: The opposite of materialism that suggests the priority
of ideals of good will and justice and love and fair play, prin-
ciples, values, and goals over concrete realities.
Immanent moralism: In these religions, the stress is not upon
what transcends (goes beyond) man’s experience, but rather
on what’s near at hand—the immanent, close at hand, nearby.
Polytheism: A belief in many (poly) gods (theos).
Pseudo-messianic: False messiahs.

Transcendent mysticism: Religions of this sort place an em-
phasis on what goes beyond man’s experience.
Unitarianism: In terms of Christian theology the term refers to
the belief that God is one person (uni: “one”) as opposed to
the triune (tri: from Latin tres “three”) nature of God as one
God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
1. How did Aristotle, Plato’s best student, refute him?

2. What are the three basic kinds of religious philosophies?
3. What are the three types of biblical counterfeit religions?
Give an example of each.
4. When someone comes to you trying to convince you of a
religious point of view, you need to keep on asking him what
question? Why?
5. “Without the biblical worldview, there is no basis for believ-
ing anything.” Discuss.
6. Do religious worldviews have different rules than other
worldviews?
7. Buddha says not to believe any authorities; experience must
be the basis of what you believe. How does that make reli-
gious authority arbitrary?
8. What are some examples of internal contradictions in Bud-
dha’s teachings?
CHAPTER 11
BIBLICAL
COUNTERFEIT
RELIGIONS
We have said that there are only three basic non-Christian

worldviews. There are worldviews that amount to materialistic
atheism, and we did an internal critique of them, dealing with
the philosophical issues of induction and deduction, mind, free-
dom, and moral absolutes. There are also worldviews that are
dualistic, that believe there is mind and body, physicality but
also ideas or concepts, and we used Plato as our illustration. We
found that the secular version of dualism won’t fly because it has
no way to relate mind and body, no way to account for how the
forms or ideas and the physical world come into contact. The
secular dualist cannot relate these two realms, except arbitrarily.
Then we turned to religious options, pointing out that they
are to be treated the same way as any other worldview is to be
treated. The fact that they are religious doesn’t change the way
201
you evaluate them. In the last chapter, we dealt with religions of

transcendent mysticism, such as Hinduism, and religions of im-
manent moralism, such as Buddhism and Confucianism. Now,
in this chapter, we’ll address biblical counterfeits.
The biblical counterfeit religions fall into three classifica-
tions. There are some that are polytheistic, some that are unitar-
ian, rejecting the Trinity in one way or another, and some that
are pseudo-messianic.
M O R M O N I S M : A P O LY T H E I S T I C
BIBLICAL COUNTERFEIT
The example of a polytheistic biblical counterfeit that we’re going

to look at is Mormonism. That Mormonism is polytheistic has
been demonstrated beyond any doubt. Mormons even believe
that Mormons can become gods.1 The county records of Bain-
bridge, New York, show that before Joseph Smith assumed the
role of the prophet of this new religion, he was tried and con-
victed as a glass-looker. A glass-looker is a kind of con man, who
would claim that by looking through a particular glass—Smith’s
method was to put the glass in his hat and put his face over the
hat and then look down at the ground—he could find buried
treasure or where a well was to be dug. It was a scheme to make
1. “Latter-day Saints see all people as children of God in a full and complete
sense; they consider every person divine in origin, nature, and potential. Each
has an eternal core and is ‘a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.’
[“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Ensign or Liahona [Nov. 2010],
129.] Each possesses seeds of divinity and must choose whether to live in har-
mony or tension with that divinity. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all
people may ‘progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine desti-
ny.’” (“Becoming Like God,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints:
http://bit.ly/3bwaLUI)
Biblical Counterfeit Religions 203
money, and Smith was convicted of it. Mormons are sensitive

to this fact. I don’t bring it up as a way to ridicule Mormons but
rather because you need to be aware that before Joseph Smith
was regarded as a prophet of God, he was a confidence man—
and that at least raises the possibility, doesn’t it, that he found
another way to con people, this time using religion.
Joseph Smith was born in 1805 in Vermont. His family set-
tled in New York when he was eleven years old, and his family
joined the Presbyterian church, although he himself did not.
He seemed to be perplexed about all the different denomina-
tions and so, according to his story, he went into the woods
to pray. When he was fourteen, he claimed that two persons
appeared to him in the woods, and one of them said, “This is
my beloved son; hear him.” Joseph was told that he was to join
no church, since they were all wrong and all their creeds were
an abomination.
Then, in September 1823, he had another alleged vision.
This vision was repeated twice in one night. An angel by the
name of Moroni came to him at his bedside, claiming to be
the messenger of God’s presence and said that God had work
for Smith to do. He was told that there was a book written on
golden plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of
the continent of North America, and that the fullness of the
everlasting gospel delivered by the Savior to these ancient in-
habitants of America was deposited in a hill outside the village
where Joseph Smith resided. What does the Bible say? We’re
told by Paul in his letter to the Christians in Galatia:
I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called

you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is re-
ally not another; only there are some who are disturbing you
and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an
angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to
what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have
said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you
a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
(Gal 1:6–9)
Running counter to the Bible’s warning, the next day, as

the story goes, Joseph Smith went out and found these golden
plates in a stone box. He was not allowed to take them, but he
had to return to the same place on the same day for the next
four years. Then, in 1827, he was given them to take care of.
Prior to this time, he had eloped with a woman named
Emma Hale of Harmony, Pennsylvania, because her father re-
fused to give consent to a marriage with a glass-looker. Later, he
returned to his father-in-law’s house because of persecution he
was facing. He says that then he began copying characters and
translating the plates.
A New York farmer named Martin Harris proposed to pub-
lish this book that Smith was writing, but he wanted assurance
that the plates from which he was translating were genuine
and that they were being properly translated. Smith gave the
characters he says he copied from the plates and the transla-
tion of what he claimed was the “Reformed Egyptian” language
to Harris, who allegedly had them confirmed by a Professor
Charles Anthon in New York City. There is no such language as
“Reformed Egyptian.” This professor is said to have confirmed
that the characters were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Babylonian, and
Arabic, which is tough because that’s not really a language.
In 1829, former schoolteacher Oliver Cowdery became an

amanuensis or secretary for Smith as he translated the plates.
But Cowdery was not allowed to see the plates. Joseph Smith
would go on one side of a sheet that was hung up to block any-
one from viewing what was going on behind it, and from there
he would dictate his translation and Cowdery, sitting on the
other side of the sheet, would write it down.
A professor told Joseph Smith that he had

confirmed that the characters on the plates
were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Babylonian, and
Arabic, and something called “Reformed
Egyptian,” which is not a known language.
A month after they began this process, they went into the
woods to pray and there we are told John the Baptist descended
as a heavenly messenger and conferred upon them the priesthood
of Aaron. They began to prophesy and to understand the Scrip-
ture. Later, Peter, James, and John conferred the Melchizedekian
priesthood on them on the banks of the Susquehanna River—
despite the fact that the Bible says that the priesthood is for the
Lord Jesus alone, and there is no longer any need for human
priests. In March 26, 1830, the Book of Mormon2 went on sale.
2. “The Book of Mormon is supposedly an inspired account of the Hebrews
who left the Holy Land for America around 589 BC. . . . The historical inaccu-
racies contained in the Book of Mormon are well documented [Gleason L. Ar-
cher, Jr., Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974),
509–512.] Evidence has been presented indicating that a retired pastor named
Solomon Spaulding was the real author of The Book of Mormon. Though Spauld-
ing intended this work to be a novel, Joseph Smith gained access to it after the
death of Spalding and proclaimed it to be divine revelation.” [Walter Martin, The
On April 6, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

was officially organized and incorporated with six members,
the oldest being 31 years of age. Within a month, they had
forty members. They did missionary work among the Indians
of Kirkwood, Ohio, and it was at that point that Joseph Smith
received the revelation of the Doctrines and the Covenants. He
also revised the King James Version of the Bible, and then re-
ceived a revelation that Jackson County, Missouri, was “the land
of promise, and the place for the city of Zion.” For that reason,
many people settled in Independence, Missouri.
However, mobs attacked them. This led to a change of the
spot for the city of God to Far West, Missouri. After several
battles between the settlers and the Mormons, the state mili-
tia intervened. Smith and a few other Mormon leaders were
imprisoned. They escaped and moved to Illinois. In 1839, the
city of Nauvoo on the Mississippi River was established, and
the small army called the Nauvoo Legion was organized. When
an anti-Mormon newspaper published an article unfavorable
to the Mormons in the area, Joseph Smith ordered the press to
be destroyed and all the copies of the newspaper to be burned.
A complaint was then brought to the governor of the state
that led to the arrest of Joseph Smith. He was later released but
was then rearrested with his brother. At that point, a mob at-
tacked the jail in Carthage, Illinois, and Smith was killed.
It is my opinion that the martyrdom of Joseph Smith contrib-
uted to making the Mormon church a success. Now they had a
Maze of Mormonism (Santa Ana, CA: Vision House, 59)]. Phil Fernandes, The
Fernandes Guide to Apologetic Methodologies (Bremerton, WA: IBD Press, 2016),
390–391. Also see J. N. Andrews, “A Brief History of Mormonism,” The Present
Truth I:4 (August 1884), 50–51: http://bit.ly/38oxwb5
martyr, and bleeding hearts love a martyr. So Joseph Smith became

a hero to his followers and those who joined the new religion.
“AS FAR AS IT IS TRANSLATED CORRECTLY”
Let’s ask our question, now: By what authority do Mormons

teach what they teach? According to Article 8 of their Articles of
Faith, we read: “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as
far as it is translated correctly.” This is Mormon doctrine. It is part
of their worldview. Their theory of knowledge is based on God
revealing Himself to us and the belief that He has revealed Him-
self in the Bible, provided that the Bible is translated correctly.
That should tell you something. The Mormon manner of
translation is not objective, not something that can be publicly
verified. For the Mormons, translation is really a form of further
revelation.
The Mormon manner of translation is not

objective, not something that can be publicly
verified. For the Mormons, translation is really
a form of further revelation.
There’s a select individual following a procedure that nobody

can double-check, and you’re to accept his word that he has done
the translation properly. True biblical translation work is done by
a committee of scholars who check and recheck their work against
the original languages. If the Mormon church gets to determine
if the Bible is “correctly translated,” then the Mormon church can
make it say what it wants it to say to conform to Mormon doctrine.
The Mormons go on in their Article to say, “We also believe

the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.” Did you no-
ticed that it doesn’t add “as far as it is translated correctly”? Why
is that? Because, according to the story, the translation of the
Book of Mormon was inspired. That puts the Book of Mormon
ahead of the Bible. The Bible—or your version of the Bible—
must be tested against the Book of Mormon.
It’s important to understand that Joseph Smith’s revision
of the Bible is far more than a corrected translation. It is, in
fact, a rewriting of the Bible in the light of his new revelations.
In Genesis 3, according to the corrected translation, we find
that Satan includes an offer to God to redeem mankind from
his subsequent rebellion. In Genesis 6, we have Adam being
baptized by immersion and a long prophecy by Enoch, about
whom we have only one passing comment in the original. We
also learn that a man’s ability to propagate sexually rests on his
fall into sin. Amazingly, in the corrected translation of Genesis
50 we have a prediction of the appearance of Joseph Smith.
The Book of Mormon should be read. When people tell you
they have a revelation from God, rather than debating the for-
malities of whether they do or don’t, sometimes it’s helpful just
to go ahead and look at what they claim to be the Word of God.
If you read the Bible and compare it to the Book of Mormon,
it’s clear that what they claim is not a revelation from God. It
carries no authority, no convicting power, no persuasiveness. It
doesn’t even seem to be particularly religious.
There are also obvious contradictions between the Book of
Mormon and the Bible. According to Deuteronomy 13 and 18,
we are to test all further revelation that is given by God ac-
cording to previous revelation, because God doesn’t contradict
Himself. If He gives further revelation, He isn’t going to change

His mind. If further revelation contradicts previous revelation,
you know that it’s bogus.
Do the Book of Mormon and the other official Mormon
documents harmonize with previous revelation? The Mormons
tell us, after all, that the Bible is God’s revelation.
A PLURALITY OF GODS AND

CONTRADICTIONS
According to the teaching of the Mormons, there is a plurality

of gods. Each of these gods has his own universe. Women who
engage in celestial marriage will have the privilege of bearing chil-
dren for all eternity. These baby souls that they bear will come into
human bodies as human bodies become available. People who live
up to the teachings of the Book of Mormon and engage in celes-
tial marriage and a few other weird things have the prospect of go-
ing on to godhood and having one of these universes as their own.
The God of this world, according to Mormons, is Adam, and all
gods are material rather than spiritual beings and undergo change.
Does the Bible teach that God is a material being? Does the
Bible teach that God changes? Does the Bible call the God of
this world Adam? No.
When the Mormon starts pressing you, point out those con-
tradictions. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong. Obvi-
ously, the Book of Mormon and other official Mormon teach-
ings contradict the Bible, thus, they are wrong.
What if they say, “But your Bible has been corrupted by all
these charlatans and con men”? “For years they got away with
this, and what we have is the truth. Joseph Smith, the prophet
of God, holding both the priesthoods of Aaron and Melchize-

dek, was inspired in his translation so that you can trust him”?
The Bible makes it clear that Jesus is the High Priest (Heb.
4:14–16). According to Mormon doctrine, there is a direct con-
tradiction with the Bible.
When the Mormon starts pressing you, point

out those contradictions. Somebody is right
and somebody is wrong. Obviously, the Book
of Mormon and other official Mormon teach-
ings contradict the Bible, thus, they are wrong.
THE UNKNOWN LANGUAGE

O F R E F O R M E D E GY P T I A N
What are the languages of the Book of Mormon? Of course,

we’re only dealing with them based on what they themselves say.
Remember what we said before: When the unbelievers speaks
he’ll give himself enough rope that he hangs himself. The lan-
guages of the Book of Mormon are such that they could not be
translated without an additional miracle. In fact, in the Book
of Mormon 9:32–34, the Mormons admit that “Reformed
Egyptian” is not a known human language: “None other people
knoweth our language.”3
3. “And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge,
in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed
down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech. And if our plates
had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew
hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye
would have had no imperfection in our record. But the Lord knoweth the things
Remember that Martin Harris wanted to know if these

golden plates were real and the answer given to him was that the
plates were in “Reformed Egyptian.” Sometime between that
story and the writing of 9:32–34, obviously, Joseph Smith ran
into some problems, not the least of which is that “Reformed
Egyptian” doesn’t exist as a language.
Where there are no manuscript copies for scholars to study
and discuss and translate, we’re left with taking one man’s word.
Forget the fact that he was a confidence man. We must just take
one man’s word that these plates existed and were in a language
that is not a human language and that he miraculously trans-
lated them by inspiration. Interestingly, there have been many
changes in the Book of Mormon since the original edition was
published in 1830—many changes, even though the original
edition was supposed to be an inspired translation.
According to 9:33, Hebrew would have been the more per-
fect language, but the plates weren’t large enough for the He-
brew script. To which you might respond: “Couldn’t your god
give plates big enough for the Hebrew script if that’s really the
more perfect language?” (By the way, we have no other record
of writing on metal plates from antiquity. Yet, according to the
Mormons, the Old Testament was once put on brass plates
around the year 600 B.C.)
The Mormons are telling you a story, but they can’t even tell
the story straight. When Martin Harris had questions about
whether these plates were bogus or not, they allegedly went to
which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language;
and because that none other people knoweth our language, therefore he hath pre-
pared means for the interpretation thereof ” (Mormon 9:32–34, online: https://
www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/morm/9.32-34?lang=eng).
New York City and had a professor of linguistics confirm their

translation. But now we read that “none other people knoweth
our language.” If that’s true, then how did Professor Anthon do
what he is said to have done?
To begin with, you have the problem that Joseph Smith was
originally a con man. On top of that, they can’t keep the story
straight. But aside from these two problems, if a religion claims
the Bible is the Word of God and then wants to add something
to it, your apologetic is straightforward. You’re going to show
that the Bible does not support their further revelation but
rather conflicts with it. They can’t have it both ways.
It comes down to a choice between wanting to

believe a story somebody told and what can
be publicly verified. If you choose to believe
what anybody tells you, that’s simply being
arbitrary.
The Mormon answer to that apologetic is to say, “You don’t

have the Bible. We do. We have an inspired translation, and you
don’t.” To which you are going to say, “It comes down to your
believing a story about a man who had plates that no one else
was allowed to see and who translated a language that no other
human on earth knows, allegedly in an inspired way. It really
does not come down to a choice between revelations that are
objectively available and open to public examination. It comes
down to the word of Joseph Smith against all the public evi-
dence we have for the manuscript integrity of the Scriptures,
their translation, and so forth.”
That means that it comes down to a choice between want-

ing to believe a story somebody told and what can be publicly
verified. If you choose to believe what anybody tells you, that’s
simply being arbitrary. We’ve talked about these major mistakes
in philosophy, arbitrariness and inconsistency, and now we’ve
seen that Mormonism is guilty of both.
Compare what we know about the origin of the origin of
Book of Mormon from the testimony of one man to what the
Bible says about the investigative methodology that Luke used
through the Holy Spirit to write his gospel:
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things

that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed
down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and
servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have
carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too de-
cided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-
ophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you
have been taught (Luke 1:1–4).
Luke mentions multiple eyewitnesses and “many convincing

proofs” in his recounting the history of Jesus’ ministry and the
church up through Paul’s imprisonment (Acts 1:3; 28:30–31).
The Apostle Paul offers similar testimony that Jesus “appeared to
Cehpas,” Peter, “then to the twelve. After that He appeared to
more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom re-
main [alive] until now [in Paul’s day], but some have fallen asleep,”
that is, died; “then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles”
(1 Cor. 15:5–7). This is a far cry from what Joseph Smith claimed
was the origin of the Book of Mormon. There is no eyewitness
testimony to the history of the supposed historical events.
I S L A M : A U N I TA R I A N
BIBLICAL COUNTERFEIT
Maybe someone can do better with a further revelation. Let’s

look at Islam. While Mormonism is an example of a polytheis-
tic biblical counterfeit, Islam is a unitarian biblical counterfeit.
Muslims reject the Trinity and believe that the doctrine of the
Trinity is idolatrous. There is only one God who is only one
person, and his name is Allah. His messenger or prophet was
Mohammed.
When Mohammed, the alleged prophet of God, began to
promote Islam, the Arabians at the time worshiped many gods,
one of whom was called Allah. Mohammed said Allah was, in
fact, the only God and the other gods needed to be given up.
That got him into trouble, and so he ended up fleeing to the city
of Mecca and many wars followed. The history of Islam from its
very beginning has been filled with bloodshed and warfare and
evangelism by the sword.
The holy book of Islam is the Quran or Koran. What is the
Quran and how did it coming into being? It’s good to investi-
gate these questions, because one of the points a Muslim apolo-
gist will make is that there are no variants in the Quran as there
are in the Bible. With the Bible, we have various manuscript
traditions that have somewhat different readings. The science
of textual criticism has been developed to look at these variants
and decide which is most likely the original. None of them af-
fects any major doctrines, so they’re not really all that import-
ant, but the variants do exist. But Muslims will tell you, “We
have no variants in the Quran, and so the Quran is superior to
the Bible.”
For that reason, we must remember where the Quran came

from and its own textual history. Mohammed would go into a
cave and sometimes, in that cave, he would be caught up in reli-
gious ecstasy. Even many Muslim scholars will tell you it’s likely he
was an epileptic. Whether that is the case or not, someone could
say Allah used epileptic seizures to get his word to Mohammed.
So that doesn’t have to disqualify his testimony automatically.
When he would get these alleged revelations from Allah, he
would cry out and they’d have to be written down and some
of them he had to remember. At the time, they didn’t have a
lot of good writing material. It turns out that the Quran was
originally made up of particles of revelation written down on
bones and leaves, sometimes papyrus, though not often. One
day, somebody had to bring all this together and make a book
out of it. It will probably not surprise you, then, that in the
early days of this new religion there were different traditions as
to what Mohammed actually said.
That proved to be embarrassing to the Muslims, and so in
the third caliphate of this new religious and social movement,
all the variant translations were called in upon the pain of death
and one tradition was chosen as the original and the rest were
destroyed. This is how the Muslims performed the miracle of
having no variant readings.
ISLAM’S FIVE MAJOR DOCTRINES
There are five major doctrines of Islam. First, Allah is the one
true God. Second, Allah has sent many prophets to guide men,
and Mohammed is the latest and greatest of these prophets.
Third, of the four inspired books—the Pentateuch (the law of
Moses), the Psalms, the Gospel of Jesus, and the Quran—the

Quran is the most important. This means the Quran itself rec-
ognizes the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Gospel of Jesus as
previous revelations.
If a Muslim tells says the Quran follows a long line of revela-
tions from Allah, including portions of the Bible that he claims
are inspired, your internal critique can start there: “Let’s go to
those part of the Bible and compare them to the Quran.” Or
even, “Let’s look what we hold in common. Let’s study the law
of Moses and the Psalms and talk about their theology,” and
then you can discuss human sin and the need for blood atone-
ment and matters like that.
The Quran contains several interesting teach-

ings, not the least of which is that Jesus did not
die on the cross. Judas was substituted for Him.
The Quran contains several interesting teachings, not the

least of which is that Jesus did not die on the cross. Judas was
substituted for Him. It says that the mother of Jesus was Mir-
iam, the sister of Moses, a confusion that probably arose because
their names sound alike, and the Quran was based on an oral
tradition. To this day, this is still an embarrassment to scholars of
the Quran. The best answer I’ve heard is that Mary was a woman
like Miriam, and so that’s why those two are conflated. More
importantly, there is also doctrinal conflict between the teaching
of Moses and David and Jesus and what Mohammed said.
Now if the teaching of Moses is inspired, and if Deuteron-
omy 13 and 18 tell you that future revelations must be judged
according to previous revelations, and if the alleged future reve-

lation of the Quran conflicts with the previous revelation of Mo-
ses, which one has to go? By their own logic, which must go? The
Quran. Those who advocate the worldview of Islam cannot live
according to their own worldview. There is this inconsistency.
Do Muslims who are shown that inconsistency say, “We’re
wrong and now we’re going to follow Jesus”? The Holy Spirit
can use that witness and sometimes that happens—but not fre-
quently. The answer usually given is that we have the wrong
translation of the law of Moses. Allah gave to Mohammed the
ability to correct the previous perversions of his word.
What you have here is like a contract that reads this way:
You may choose one, two, three, and four, provided there are no
conflicts between the first three and the fourth. Four will govern
whatever you make of one, two, and three. The law of Moses,
the Psalms, and the Gospel accounts of Jesus are previous revela-
tions, but whenever we find a conflict between them it has been
determined in advance that the last revelation—the Quran—
will correct the alleged previous revelations. This means that the
authority of the previous revelations is not really being honored.
What they’re saying is that you follow the Quran, the Quran,
the Quran—because whatever differs with the Quran must go.
According to the Quran, Allah is a being so different from
anything in this world, so transcendent, so beyond human ex-
perience that nothing in human language and nothing in hu-
man experience can correctly describe Allah. But then if nothing
in human experience or language can correctly describe Allah,
what is the Quran?
What that means, then, is that if you believe the Quran,
then it cannot be what it says it is. If the Quran is right about
Allah, then the Quran cannot be the book it claims to be in

talking about this transcendent being Allah.
THE PSEUDO-MESSIANIC
We could also discuss the third category of biblical counter-

feit religions, the pseudo-messianic. Jesus prophesied during His
ministry that there would be “false prophets” (Matt. 24:11;
also, 1 John 4:1) and “false Christs” (Matt. 24:5, 24–26) in the
lead up the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in AD 70
at the hands of the Romans before their generation passed away
(24:34; Luke 21:32).
Just as Jesus predicted, there were false messiahs in the first
century. Simon claimed to be called “the Great Power of God”
(Acts 8:9–11). Simon “had for a long time astonished them
with his magic arts” (8:11) which certainly fall into the category
of “great signs and wonders.”
Alexander Keith, in his study of the first-century destruction
of Jerusalem, wrote that “Dositheus, the Samaritan, pretended
that he was the lawgiver prophesied of by Moses.”4 There were
so many impostors preying on the gullibility of the people that
under the procuratorship of Felix (Acts 23:24), “many of them
were apprehended and killed every day. They seduced great
numbers of the people still expecting the Messiah; and well
therefore might our Saviour caution his disciples against them.”5
4. Alexander Keith, Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, Derived

from the Literal Fulfillment of Prophecy; Particularly as Illustrated by the History of
the Jews and by the Discoveries of Recent Travelers (Edinburgh: William Whyte &
Co., 1844), 60.
5. Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies, Which Have Remarkably Been
Fulfilled, and at This Time Are Fulfilling in the World (London: J. F. Dove, 1754), 333.
In Acts 13:6 we read about Elymus who is described as “a

magician” and “a Jewish false prophet” who was working to turn
people “away from the faith” (13:8). This sounds a lot like what
Jesus said would happen in that first-century generation: “as to
mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24).
Paul was thought to be “the Egyptian who some time ago
stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assas-
sins out into the wilderness” (Acts 21:38). People were look-
ing for a messianic figure who could rescue them from the tyr-
anny of Rome and the corrupt religious establishment (Matt.
13:14–21).
The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37–c. 100)
writes the following in his eyewitness account of the destruction
of Jerusalem that took place in AD 70:
A false prophet was the occasion of these people’s destruction,

who had made a public proclamation in the city that very day,
that God commanded them to get upon the temple, and that
there they should receive miraculous signs of their deliverance.
Now, there was then a great number of false prophets suborned
by the tyrants to impose upon the people, who denounced this
to them, that they should wait for deliverance from God. . . .”6
[F]or one Jonathan, a vile person, and by trade a weaver,
came thither and prevailed with no small number of the poorer
sort to give ear to him; he also led them into the desert, upon
promising them that he would show them signs and appari-
tions. . . . [O]f these many were slain in the fight, but some were
taken alive, and brought to Catullus.7
6. Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews,” 7.5.2.

7. Flavius Josephus, Wars of The Jews, 7.11.10.
There’s a long history of false messianic claimants. It seems

that nearly every generation has one or two.8 For example, as
recent as the 1980s and 1990s, Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012)
claimed to be the third Messiah. Jesus supposedly failed in his
task, and so Moon had come to do the work that Jesus failed
to accomplish and create a new celestial family. Moon said that
“when he was fifteen years old Jesus anointed him to carry out
his unfinished work by becoming parent to all of humanity.”
In 1954, Moon founded the Holy Spirit Association for the
Unification of World Christianity in Seoul, South Korea, based
on his version of conservative, family-oriented teachings based
on new interpretations of the Bible.
Moon taught that mankind fell spiritually when Eve had

sexual intercourse with Lucifer, and that mankind fell physi-
cally when Eve later had sexual intercourse with Adam. Moon
instructed his disciples that Jesus prematurely died, having only
provided for man’s spiritual salvation. According to Moon, Je-
sus failed to provide physical salvation for mankind by raising
a family who would inherit His sinless nature. He died before
He could procure such a family. Now, it is up to Moon to
physically save mankind. . . .
When witnessing to Moon’s followers, it should be pointed
out that the Bible teaches that the Fall of mankind was due to
disobedience of a clear command of God (Genesis 3:1–6). It
had nothing to do with sex. The Scriptures teach that Jesus did
not fail, and He accomplished salvation completely for man-
kind (1 Peter 2:24; 3:18; Hebrews 10: 14; Matthew 20:28).9
8. “List of Messiah Claimants”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mes-
siah_claimants
9. Fernandes, The Fernandes Guide to Apologetic Methodologies, 402–403.
Here, too, if you ask the same kinds of questions we’ve been
asking of the other worldviews, you will find that this sort of
religion crumbles as well as we compare its doctrines with God’s
Word. What standard did Moon use to establish his creden-
tials as the messiah? Himself. This demonstrated his messianic
claims to be arbitrary. What religion did he claim to represent?
The Christian religion. Such a declaration was inconsistent and
contradictory when compared with the testimony of Scripture.
Anyone claiming to be the messiah as described in Scripture
will always be arbitrary, inconsistent, and contradictory since
the Bible is clear that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the messi-
anic promises and prophecies.
1. Recount briefly how Joseph Smith claimed to have found

the golden plates that became the Book of Mormon.
2. How does Mormonism contradict what the Apostle Paul
writes in Galatians 1:6–9 and compare it with Luke 1:1–4,
Acts 1:1–4, and 1 Cor. 15:1–8?
3. How does the requirement that the Bible is the Word of
God only when it “is translated correctly” affect critiquing
Mormon Church doctrine?
4. What is the Quran and how did it come into being?
5. What are Islam’s five major doctrines?
6. According to Islam, who died on the cross? How does this
contradiction compare with the Bible?
7. Name some other Islamic beliefs that contradict the Bible.
8. What does the Bible say about false Christs?
GLOSSARY
A priori knowledge: Knowledge that comes prior to experience

in this world.
Apologetics: Does not mean to apologize for being a Christian.
(1) “The application of Scripture to unbelief (including the un-
belief that remains in the Christian). The study of how to give
to inquirers a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15).”1
Aristotle rejected Plato’s contention that physical things were
representations of idealized perfect forms that existed on an-
other plane of reality. Aristotle thought that the essence of an
object existed with the thing itself.
Autonomous Thinking: To think autonomously (Greek: auto
(self) + nomos (law) = a law unto one’s self) means that the
individual is “subject only to his own criteria of truth, free to
ignore those of God.”2 J. I. Packer writes the following: “Man
was not created autonomous, that is, free to be a law to himself,
but theonomous, that is, bound to keep the law of his Maker.”3
1. John M. Frame, Apologetics: A Justification of Christian Belief (Phillipsburg,

NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 2015), 289–290.
3. J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Carol
Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, [1993] 2001), 91.
223
Begging the Question: A logical fallacy that assumes the an-

swer that needs to be proved. It is also known as circular
reasoning or a circular argument. In ultimate questions, cir-
cular arguments are necessary. For example, the use of reason
is used to prove the reality of reason. Logic must be used to
prove the constancy of logic. “All worldviews ultimately rely
on ‘circular’ reasoning for ultimate questions.”4
Behaviorism: The psychological doctrine that says human be-
ings act as they are conditioned to act. The behaviorist says
advanced white rats.
Borrowed capital: “The truth known and acknowledged by the
unbeliever. He has no right to believe or assert truth based
on his own presuppositions, but only on Christian ones so
his assertions of truth are based on borrowed capital.”5
Categorical inference: A person makes a judgment about
whether something is or could be a member of a certain
category.
Cogito, ergo sum: Latin for, “I think, therefore I am.”
Deconstructionism: Every reading of a text is a misreading of
the text, because it is impossible to get back to the original
intent of the author. Therefore, all literary interpretation is
really the person doing the reading bringing his or her own
ideas to a text.
Deductive inference: Relies on the laws of logic. When we de-
duce conclusions, we take the laws of logic and the truths
4. Joel McDurmon, Biblical Logic in Theory and Practice (Powder Springs,

GA: American Vision Press, 2009), 150.
Glossary 225
that we know, and we do operations upon these truths ac-

cording to the laws of logic and draw other conclusions.
Deism: God exists but He does not interact with His creation.
Demiurge: Not a god who interacts with its creation but an
undefined being responsible for the creation of the universe.
In Platonic philosophy the Craftsman (the meaning of De-
miurge) or Creator of the world.
Determinism: The determinist holds that everything—every
event that takes place—is theoretically predictable if you
know all the antecedent (prior) causes for it.
Dualism: Means that there are two types of reality: mind and
matter, or spirit and body.
Dubito, ergo sum: Latin for, “I doubt, and therefore I must
exist in order to do the doubting.”
Empiricism: The view that sense experience is the foundation
of human knowledge. Seeing is believing.
Epicureanism: Argues that pleasure is the chief good in life.
Hence, Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive
the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one’s life-
time, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering
incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure.
Epistemology: Theory of knowledge. What is the nature and
what are the limits of human knowledge? How do you know
what you know?
Existentialism: Nothing governs what you will be. You come
into this world as an existent and then you choose what you
will be: “Existence precedes essence.” Nothing determines
your essence from outside. Jean-Paul Sartre: “What is meant
here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first
of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only
afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist con-

ceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing.
Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will
have made what he will be. . . . There is no human nature,
since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what
he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills
himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is noth-
ing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first prin-
ciple of existentialism.”6
Golden Rule: The principle of treating others as you want to be
treated. Jesus said, “In everything, therefore, treat people the
same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and
the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12).
Hedonism: The pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.
Idealism: Says the idea of something is outside of this world.
The idea of humanity is outside of this world. The idea of
love is outside of this world. In this world, all we have at best
are approximations.
Idealism: The opposite of materialism that suggests the priority
of ideals of good will and justice and love and fair play, prin-
ciples, values, and goals over concrete realities.
Immanent moralism: In these religions, the stress is not upon
what transcends (goes beyond) man’s experience, but rather
on what’s near at hand—the immanent, close at hand,
nearby.
Individuation: The process through which a person achieves a
sense of individuality separate from the identities of others
and begins to consciously exist as a human in the world.
6. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism and Humanism,” Existentialism from

Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, Meridian Publishing Co., 1989.,
Glossary 227
What makes you different from me? What makes any two
things in a particular class different from one another?
Inductive inference: Takes something we have experienced in
the past and projects it into the future.
Iterated belief: A belief about a person’s beliefs.
Laws of Logic: More than a set of abstract rules for thinking
straight. The rules and reliability of logic are an extension of
God’s nature. What’s true of logic is true of everything. Jo-
hannes Kepler used the phrase “thinking God’s thoughts after
Him.” There is an ethical dimension to logic that’s found in the
Ninth Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against
your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). Logic is about telling the truth.
Marxism: Is somewhat different from behaviorism in that it fo-
cuses not so much upon human psychology and what makes
individuals do what they do, but rather upon certain histor-
ical forces—in particular, economic forces and the means of
production used in a particular society—that determine the
outcome of that society as a whole.
Materialistic atomism: It says that there is an infinite number
of bits of reality, but they’re all made of matter. Reality is
made up of physical stuff, and that physical stuff is broken
down into smaller and smaller bits of matter. That is the
view that comes closest to the common outlook of our cul-
ture today. It is the prevailing view in the sciences in the uni-
versity, and it’s what most people take for granted until you
start pressing them on the implications of their worldview.
Maya: Everything is illusion.
Metaphysics: The study of the nature of reality. What lies be-
which we live? Where did it come from? What is its struc-
ture? What things are real? Does God exist? Does man have
a soul? Is there a life after death?
Naturalism: Is also known as “atheism, scientific materialism,
and secular humanism. . . . The most fundamental belief
from which all others flow is that nature or matter is all that
exists. It has always existed, or it came into existence from
nothing. There is nothing outside or before nature, i.e., the
material universe that is studied by modern science. There is
no God and no supernatural.”7
Neo-orthodoxy: A reaction to liberalism. Teaches that the Bi-
ble is not the Word of God but a series of propositions to be
believed so that it becomes the Word of God to the person
reading and acting on it. In this way the real Word (Jesus) is
encountered and experienced. Many of the events recorded
in the Bible are not historical (e.g., Jesus’ resurrection) and
don’t need to be. There is no fixed standard of truth.
Nirvana: A transcendent state of bliss where there is no suffer-
ing, desire, or sense of self. The person is released from the
effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth.
Pantheism: From two Greek words, pan meaning “all” and
theos meaning “God.” According to Scripture, God is dis-
tinct from His creation: “In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). If the cosmos were to go
out of existence, God would still exist. Pantheism teaches
that all is one, thus, everything is God. All things make up
what some people claim is “God.”
Philosophy: Technically, the love (philo) of wisdom (sophia).
As an academic discipline, philosophy is the study of the
7. Terry Mortenson, “The Religion of Natrualism,” Answers in Genesis (May

5, 2017): https://bit.ly/2UrBDxD
Glossary 229
fundamental source and nature of being, knowledge, reality,

and existence.
Plato believed in abstract entities (the Forms) or Ideas and de-
nied the material reality of the physical world. Plato consid-
ered the material world only as an image or copy of the real
world where these forms or ideas reside outside the real world.
Political ethics: (also known as political morality or public eth-
ics) is the practice of making moral judgments about polit-
ical issues and political agents from operating worldviews.
The Bible has a great deal to say about political or civil ethics.
Polytheism: A belief in many (poly) gods (theos).
Pragmatism or skepticism: The pragmatist or skeptic is the
philosopher who watches all these other schools of thought
Presupposition: “A ‘presupposition’ is not just any assumption
in an argument, but a personal commitment that is held at
the most basic level of one’s network of beliefs. Presuppo-
sitions form a wide-ranging, foundational perspective (or
starting point) in terms of which everything else is inter-
preted and evaluated. As such, presuppositions have the
greatest authority in one’s thinking, being treated as one’s
least negotiable beliefs and being granted the highest immu-
nity to revision.”8
Pseudo-messianic: False messiahs.
Rationalism: From the Latin ratio “reason.” (1) The view that
human reason is the final judge of what’s true and false, right
and wrong. (2) The philosophical position that human rea-
son is to be trusted above human sense-experience.
8. Greg L. Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg,

NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1998), 2, note 4.
Red herring: An informal fallacy that is used to distract the ar-

guer by diverting “attention from the issue at hand by point-
ing to an unrelated yet strongly compelling line of thought.”
The descriptive name comes from a popular story of using a
strong-smelling fish to divert a hunting dog’s attention from
chasing the wrong quarry.
Spiritual monism: Says that reality is made up of only one kind
of thing (which is why it’s called “monism,” One-ism). All is
one, and the one kind of thing that everything consists of is
spiritual in character, not physical, not material.
Stoicheia: Most often translated as “elements,” the Greek word
refers to the building blocks or fundamental principles of
learning. It does not refer to the elements of the Periodic
Table.
Stoicism: “Virtue is the only worthwhile aim and a virtuous man,
by the use of right reason, can discover his proper place in the
universe and achieve happiness whatever his circumstances.”9
Stoicism: The Stoics believed that there is a kind of physical
reality and a mental or spiritual reality. The Stoic, however,
tended to be moralistic. He said that in this world you can’t
help the circumstances of your life, but instead of fighting
against the circumstances, you ought to go with the flow.
Whatever is happening to you in this world, you must ac-
cept it and be stalwart about it, have a stiff upper lip and go
on with your life. As long as you struggle against the flow of
life and what is coming to you in this world, you’re going to
be unhappy and frustrated.
The Enlightenment: “The title given to the development of
thought in Europe and America in the late 17th and 18th
9. Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, 436.
Glossary 231
centuries. Essentially, the Enlightenment was the expres-

sion of modern man’s attempt to break free from the rule
of dogma based on divine revelation and to exercise his own
reason with complete autonomy.”10
Transcendence (biblical): The view that God exists above and
independently from all that He created (contra pantheism)
and yet is knowable and acts in and among His creation
(contra deism).
Transcendence (non-biblical): The argument that God is so far
from us that we cannot know Him or truly speak of Him.
In this sense, modern theologians sometimes say that God is
“wholly other” or “wholly hidden.”
Transcendent mysticism: Religions of this sort place an em-
phasis on what goes beyond man’s experience.
Unitarianism: In terms of Christian theology the term refers to
the belief that God is one person (uni: “one”) as opposed to
the triune (tri: from Latin tres “three”) nature of God as one
God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Utilitarianism: Maximize happiness in this world for the great-
est number of people without regard to moral commands or
a fixed standard to determine what’s ultimately good or bad.
The utilitarian says you should do what is in the best interest
of the most people. The greatest happiness for the greatest
number is what should govern your free will. You should do
whatever will be conducive to the good of everyone, as much
as you possibly can.
Worldview: A network of presuppositions that are not tested
by natural science, in terms of which all experience is related
10. Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms, 3rd ed. (Greenville, SC:
Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 146.
and interpreted that includes presuppositions about the na-

ture of God and man, the world, how we know what we
know, and how we’re supposed to live our lives.

Against All Opposition - Defending The Christian Worldview (Greg L. Bahnsen)

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AGAINST ALL

Published by The American Vision, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

Cover design and typesetting: Kyle Shepherd

Printed in the United States of America

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-915815-05-0

Published in the United States of America

At the center of every world view is what might be called the

In the 1950s, the John C. Winston Company, later to become

1. William H. Halverson, A Concise Introduction to Philosophy, 4th ed. (New

of technology (the use of computers is minimal and email was

As he spoke, the general seemed to become preoccupied with

Dallas has the General making a crucial point about fighting

worldview has a centralized guiding principle that serves as its

4. Greg L. Bahnsen, “The Reformation of Christian Apologetics,” Founda-

To make an argument for a position does not mean to be ar-

The Christian apologist is not given the option to adopt a

come to know God, God was well-pleased through the fool-

An apologetic methodology that claims a Christian should

In February 1973, Jesus Christ redeemed me in a darkly lit pub

arena when I saw a blue Dodge Dart with a Pennsylvania license

Now we come to Against All Opposition. Not long ago I

I am writing to a few “friends of presuppositionalism” in the

American Vision’s long-term goal is to continue and enhance

At the Orange County Airport, on my way to Atlanta, Georgia,

ing assumptions are not consistently applied). They think

Unbelievers have chosen a way of looking at

Unbelievers have chosen a way of looking at the world—in-

You remember the biblical story of Gideon in chapter seven

Everyone does philosophy, but not everyone does it well.1 If I

Let’s begin by realizing that although we’re

Let’s begin by realizing that although we’re defending the

1. John M. Frame, We Are All Philosophers: A Christian Introduction to Seven

There is a tendency among people when they

I trust you’ve seen this in the newspapers, on television, and

Unbelievers think that to have faith means to let your emo-

Unbelievers think that to have faith means to let

Take this definition of faith from the Dictionary of Philoso-

2. Peter A. Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Barnes & Noble,

Jesus Christ—are going to be viewed as irrational people, peo-

TURNING OUR BRAINS

I trust that you don’t want to follow that understanding of faith

Some people will claim that the idea of God becoming a

Let me explain what I mean by this. In the ancient world,

Philosophers who followed the stop-and-think

Other philosophers were less patient with this approach.

Philosophers of the “seeing is believing” type

These philosophers were the “seeing-is-believing” type and

though there is no empirical substantiation for them or (2) that

CHRISTIANITY AND LOGIC

is absurd. As Christians, we are often put in this category. There

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who was an insane philos-

Machen did not want people to believe in the gospel be-

J. Gresham Machen wrote, “Faith need not

Regardless of what certain misguided spokesmen may say, the

6. Machen, What is Faith?, 26.

When Jesus came into this world, He claimed to be the

may find that hard to believe. But God is in the business of

out of existence, God would still exist. Pantheism teaches

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What really separates the believer from the unbeliever? Is it

In the previous chapter, we saw that people see faith as irrational

is untrue. Rather, they say it entails believing something con-