Analogy Between Presuppositional Apologetics and Mathematical Proof

Christian apologetics is the discipline of giving reasons to believe the Christian message and reasons to reject intellectual attacks on Christianity. Its purpose is to help individuals by defeating intellectual objections so they can hear and accept the Christian message.

Apologetics is a thriving business among Protestants; not as much among the Catholics and Orthodox. Presuppositional apologetics, which is controversial even among Protestants and is largely associated with Calvinism, is based on two insights.

The first is that false presuppositions about the basic nature of reality will block an individual’s ability to accept the Christian message. All the correct evidence and reasoning in the world will do him no good until he corrects his false presuppositions.

This is ultimately not a rational process. Calvinism places a special emphasis on the Bible passages teaching that mankind in its natural state cannot help but reject God until God gives the individual spiritual life which is the ability to accept the Christian message. See, e.g., John 6:44 and Ephesians 2:1—10. But God also works through means, and one means of coming to faith is to hear and accept true evidence.

Many Christians reject presuppositionalism because in their experience it looks like circular reasoning: “You cannot prove God, you can only presuppose Him.” Some Christians may talk this way, but you can prove God. You just have to know the correct way. Ultimate truths are not known using ordinary ways of reasoning. See here for more details.

In any case, it’s clear that everyone has presuppositions, that most people are only dimly aware of exactly what they are, and that false presuppositions cause false beliefs, especially false beliefs about the most fundamental facts of reality.

Feminism versus the Gedanken Policy Test

Few proposals of social reform fail the Gedanken Policy Test as completely and ignominiously as feminism. Clearly, then, any sane society would repudiate feminism.

Not because it hates women, but because it wants to survive; indeed, because it wants more women (the supply of women is the rate limiting factor of social survival: few women → few children → few women … so, women are precious; men on the other hand are cheap, ergo relatively expendable (in war, the hunt, dangerous work, and so forth)).

To recapitulate the Test:

Here’s the experimental set up. Take two experimental subjects. They are two nations, or two peoples, that are exactly similar in every way – same population, same genetic inheritance, same natural resources, same climate, same customs and traditions, same system of political economy, same religion, same technical and industrial capacities, same wealth, same everything. Assume no natural disasters or benisons that afflict or benefit either group differently. Both are faced with exactly the same set of environmental factors.

Having taken this step, you have controlled for all the factors of social success and failure, other than the policy you are interested to test. So, now, you are ready to test your proposed policy. Apply it to one group, but not to the other. Which is more likely to prosper: the group that adopts the proposed policy, or the group that does not?

Notice that we are not asking which group will be nicer or more fair or more just. Justice, fairness and niceness are optional only for societies that have managed to prevail and survive in the competition with their neighbours. We are only asking which group will be wealthier, more powerful, larger and more capable; and which group will have greater morale, commitment, ingenuity, all the moral, emotional and intellectual factors of demographic success. So, it’s purely a question of natural selection; like asking which is likely to do better, as between a pig and a pig with opposable thumbs.

The nifty thing about the Gedanken Policy Test is that it excises from our consideration all questions about how society should be ordered according to some scheme or other, or according to what we think society ought to be. Ideology ain’t in it; nor are any of our preferences or biases. So, the Test can be conducted without rancor, and with no grinding of axes. About its findings, there is no reason to feel either upset or angry, on the one hand, or triumphantly vindicated, on the other: they are what they are.

OK then: how does latter day feminism fare under the Test?

Hypothesis: We are Ruled by Meta-Doctrine

Michael Anton recently hypothesized that we are not ruled by people, but by doctrine. He discusses the claim approximately between timestamps 7:30 and 10:00. Anton: “The real sovereign is the doctrine.”

The claim is plausible. We cannot identify any individual or group as having real authority/power, with the possible and highly limited exception of the Supreme Court. Every other source of power can be blocked by other powers. It has always been the case that people act because of a combination of beliefs and constraints, authority being the ultimate constraint. With almost every extant authority capable of being countermanded (especially on behalf of members of Official Victim Groups) it seems that, by a process of elimination, belief is the ultimate ruler. And doctrine establishes the beliefs of the people, so doctrine seems to rule.

But the claim also seems incorrect. The word “doctrine” implies specificity, but our leftist rulers have doctrine which constantly changes. They are not like, for example, Marxists, who preserve a set of beliefs that have a clear connection to their founder. Also, the left claims not to have doctrine, but only self-evident beliefs that are said to be “our values,” such as Democracy and DIE.

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We can resolve the paradox by postulating that the ruler is not doctrine, but meta-doctrine: Not a specific set of beliefs, but a set of impulses/attitudes/hunches that manifest differently from place to place and from time to time.

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Theodicy in a Sentence

There is no way God could have created free beings – i.e., beings per se – so that they could not err and stray from his optimal Way, and in so doing enact evil, and then suffer.

Diversity, Inclusion and Equity: a Quick Primer on the Latest False Religion and How to Correct it.

The latest mainstream false religion is based on a few fundamental principles. They support the entire thing.

In truth there is just one Fundamental Principle: Destruction. The current mainstream is devoted to Destruction. Consider, as just one of many examples, the wokeling’s slogan “Change the World.” Changing a thing, especially a society, destroys it. It is replaced with something different.

Bruce Charlton has said essentially the same thing, identifying the fundamental principle as Evil.

But Destruction and Evil have a bad public image. Subsidiary principles are needed for public consumption. The fundamental principles that get all the publicity right now are Equity, Inclusion and Diversity, in that logical order.

Pray for Lydia McGrew

Philosopher and Biblical scholar Lydia McGrew, our longstanding friend and dauntless shieldmate in the culture wars since the VFR days, has just revealed over at What’s Wrong With the World that since a week after her Pfizer covid vaccination in April, she has been afflicted with a devastating but mysterious – and, not yet diagnosed – malady that causes her daily intense and more or less constant pain. It has interfered with sleep, eating, work, sitting, walking: everything. It acts like inflammation of nerves, but that has not yet been ascertained. Since she began documenting her symptoms, Lydia has learned of many hundreds of other such cases. Perhaps thousands.

Before she got the shot, she was, so far as she knew, perfectly healthy.

Lydia is hanging in there, and she is one tough gal, but I have to say that this sounds pretty bad. Lydia wrote me last evening to ask for my prayers. I agreed, of course, and asked if I could post this appeal. She said yes.

Please join me, therefore, in an earnest prayer for the health of Lydia McGrew. Or several hundred of them.

If you do not know of Lydia’s terrific work for our side in the present war, it would do you good to check it out. You won’t be able to read it all. She’s far more prolific than all of us here put together, and she’s been at it for longer. But it’s all worth reading. With Lawrence Auster, Jim Kalb, Bruce Charlton, and Zippy Catholic, Lydia has from early days in my own career as an online apologist and culture warrior been an important and beneficent influence upon me, and if you read her stuff I think it will be the same for you. I’m going to tag this post as an Apologetical Weapon, because that’s what Lydia is.

May God bless and keep his faithful servant, Lydia McGrew. May he bring her into all knowledge, restore her to health, and give her peace and rest in him, if not yet, then soon, and at last, and forever. Amen, amen.

Girard on Anthropogenesis

 Annibale Carracci (1550 – 1609): Lapidation of St. Stephen (1604)

In the two classic pre-Christian canons of Western myth – the Greek and the Norse – anthropogenesis is brought about by natural processes under the observation of the gods.  Man is earthborn in both canons, although indirectly in the Norse, and can therefore lay claim to a mother, either Gaia or Erda.  In both myths fatherhood remains in the shadows.  The gods who observe and interact with the earliest men conform to a model thoroughly anthropomorphic.  The presence of fully human gods suggests that man existed before he existed and that man needed instruction from man in order to recognize himself and learn how to adapt himself to the cosmic environment.  In the Hellenic and Scandinavian myths humanity enters into a world of violence.  Neither Zeus nor Odin has as yet organized the world under the concept of law.  The Greek and Norse canons share a word: Titan, an item of vocabulary that carries the inner meaning of brutal criminality.  This word occurs in Old West Norse as Jotun and in Anglo-Saxon as Eotan.  The giants, that is to say the Titans and Jotuns, war perpetually with the younger generation of gods.  Peace requires the Olympians or the Aesir to suppress the giants by main force; and even then peace reprieves the universe only temporarily.  Eruptions of chaos can occur anytime and anywhere.  The Christian anthropogenesis, which is in fact the Hebrew anthropogenesis, differs minimally from its Pagan and Heathen counterparts, but it differs nevertheless in subtle ways, which make a difference.  The Biblical God draws man forth from the clay, for example, by an intentional act; and God deliberately shapes man to resemble his Creator.  The Hebrew God is less anthropomorphic than the Olympians or the Aesir, even aniconic, but his immediate precursors in Near Eastern myth, such as the Canaanite Baal and the Babylonian Ea, testify that he stems from a man-like version of deity, fit for a standing image.  The physiognomic resemblance between Creator and creature is thereby explained.

Presuppositional Apologetics: Using intuition to Discover Truth and Defend Christendom and America

 

Is it not wonderful that they should have failed to deduce from the works of God the vitally momentous consideration that a perfect consistency can be nothing but an absolute truth?

Edgar Allan Poe, quoted by Thomas Bertonneau.

Our religion is under attack. We are under attack. To defeat our opponents we must first convince ourselves that our doctrines are true and our ways are good. How can we know these things?

To know despite uncertainty and opposition we must have an argument. Not “argument” in the sense of fighting, but having a persuasive case. We must persuade ourselves first and then (God willing) we can persuade others.

My emphasis here is on persuading ourselves. If we know how we know, and we know our doctrine is true, only then can we defend ourselves.

Using arguments to defend one’s doctrine goes by the name “apologetics,” especially in Christendom. There has always been disagreement over the best type of apologetics. A recent development (about a hundred years old) is the school of Presuppositional Apologetics. It arose within Protestantism of the Reformed variety. Like all important terms, “presuppositional apologetics” has many layers of meaning. There are a few root ideas and many subsequent developments. As with all schools of thought, the presuppositional schoolmen sometimes go off into the weeds.

But the root idea of presuppositionalism is decisive for apologetics: All thinking is governed by presuppositions, meaning basic beliefs that are accepted without proof and often without conscious awareness.

To be a Christian, Part II: Why Do It?

[Part I, which lays out basic Christian teaching, is here.]

Christianity is not like any other thing you can join.

You join other things because they are enjoyable, or beneficial, or their cause is important to you. Otherwise, you have no reason to join.

Granted that it can be enjoyable, beneficial, or an important cause, Christianity is not like other things you can join. When it comes to ultimate issues, the criteria for joining a thing are different.

There are two basic reasons why you should join Christianity. One, unless your sins are forgiven you face eternity in hell, and forgiveness of sins comes only through Jesus of Nazareth. All humans live forever, but some live forever in a bad place.

The other reason is this: The completely true description of what reality is and how it operates comes only from Christianity, because God revealed this knowledge in the Bible. When a society rejects Christianity (as ours is doing) it cannot function correctly (as ours increasingly does not.)

A non-Christian society can sometimes function adequately, based on its partial understanding of reality that man can attain because he is made in the image of God and is therefore capable of grasping many truths. But America lacks even this pagan common sense. Our rulers are anti-reality, not just non-reality, in their basic orientation. We need the sanity (to say nothing of the wisdom) that comes only from Christianity.

Apologetical Weapons: Projection Manifests a Conviction of Personal Evil

It is a commonplace of neoreactionary and reactionary discourse that Social Justice Warriors always project. Once you’ve digested a Red Pill, in respect to any domain of life, you cannot help but notice this phenomenon. No one in the modern West is as hateful as the haters of haters; no one in the modern West is as blind to his own hatred.

It is worth remembering, then, that as Jung first developed the notion of projection from his own vast clinical experience, projection is of those traits that people most abhor in themselves. It arises from their deep conviction of their own personal evil. What we most hate in others then is – so Jung found – a pretty reliable indication of what we hate in ourselves, but would rather not confess to ourselves, or of course a fortiori to anyone else.