Inaugural Guest Post - Robert Baty On Presuppositionalism

Robert Baty is a retired IRS appeals officer.  On forbes.com, I have dubbed him my most constant commenter. He and I share an interest in the clergy housing allowance (Code Section 107), also known as parsonage.  The section allows the mega pastors of the mega churches to receive mega tax free housing allowances for their mega mansions.  Bob has a particular interest in , well frankly something of an obsession with,  a peculiar twist of Code Section 107 embodied in Revenue Ruling 70-549 (You can read about that here.) I have also dubbed him "bane of the basketball ministers".

He tried to get me interested in Young Earth Creationism, a challenge to "establishment science" (or what most of us would call "science") that seeks evidence supporting a highly literal reading of Genesis. I resisted until Jo Delia Hovind found her way into Tax Court.  The tax travails that her husband, Kent Hovind, created out of his Dinosaur Adventureland (One of the implications of YEC is that people and dinosaurs must have been running around at the same time) have been a staple of my forbes.com blog ever since.

The one thing that Bob could not get me to cover was Presuppositionalism, which I will not even attempt to explain, since it is the subject of the inaugural guest post of this blog, which hereby commences.

There's A Great Day Coming!

By Robert Baty

Mark your calendars!

Date: Saturday May 31, 2014
Time: 7:00 to 9:00 PM
Place: Memphis, TN

For more information, see:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/625202

It's Matt Dillahunty v. Sye Ten Bruggencate!

The parties and their constituents have been posturing for months to try and make this happen.
Maybe it will.
Maybe it won't.

Matt is an up and coming atheist celebrity.
Sye is an up and coming Presuppositional celebrity.
They are both a little nuts, which should make for an interesting encounter.

It appears neither side was very good at negotiating for what they came up with to chat about is the question:

- "Is it reasonable to believe God exists?"

Despite that question set forth for discussion, it is expected to be a battle of wits over Sye Ten Bruggencate's Presuppositional "proof God exists" claim or something directly related to it.

Sye's famous "proof God exists" claim can be found at the following website if you answer his questions correctly.  I'll save you the trouble of trying to second guess Sye.  Here's his "proof God exists":

http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/

- The proof God exists is that
- without Him you could not
- have peanut brittle.
-
-- Affirmed: Sye Ten Bruggencate

I have slightly edited what's found on that website for clarity and this article.  I used peanut brittle for simplicity, but you can use just about anything.  Sye and his people like to use such things as "knowledge", "proof", "logic", "uniformity of nature", and such because they can more effectively confound their unsuspecting opposition by thrashing about in deep philosophical waters where just about anything goes.

Being simple-minded, I prefer to stay with such things as "peanut brittle", and "speed limit signs" and such.

What Sye is doing is building a career as a Presuppositional preacher and he's been doing a pretty good job of it.  The Internet is full of accounts of his antics which involve street preaching to get some experience and many an encounter with some relative heavy hitters from the atheist side of things.

(Sye has been running from an engagement with me, a theist, for a long, long time.)

Presuppositionalism is basically a Calvinistic conversational gimmick wherein the proponent presupposes he is right and everyone else is wrong and, therefore, he is only interested in criticizing the opposition viewpoint.  The Presuppositionalist will, when pressed, typically admit that he is not out to establish the truth of his presuppositions.  

One common refrain heard from the Presuppositionalist when dealing with his opposition, such as I am, is that the opposition does not understand Presuppositionalism.  Of course, for the uninitiated it is quite easy to misunderstand Presuppositionalism and the criticism often times will be found to be reasonable.

However, I propose that when it comes to my analysis of Presuppositionalism, as simple as it is and is intended to be for us tyros, the problem is not a misunderstanding but the Presuppositionalist simply does not like to admit to and deal with my understanding of their gimmickry.

Of course, there are different sects of Presuppositionalists and Sye Ten Bruggencate is the current, leading celebrity as to a particular brand of the methodology.  

So, you ask, what is with that "proof God exists" that Sye claims to have?

That's a good question and that alleged proof is commonly seen to form the "bait" used to engage the unsuspecting in conversation.

The Sye-kind of Presuppositionalist presupposes that there is really no aspect of this present world that could be possible except God exists (this should not be confused with the similar sounding claim that if God did not exist there would be nothing), so his proof works out logically something like this:

Major Premise:

- If God did not exist,
- then you could not:
- prove anything,
- know anything,
- reason,
- expect the sun to rise,
- have peanut brittle,
- ad nauseum.

Minor Premise:

- You can:
- prove something,
- know something,
- reason,
- expect the sun to rise,
- have peanut brittle,
- ad nauseum.

Conclusion:

- Ta da, God exists.

Since the argument is constructed in such a way that if its premises are true the conclusion will follow as true therefrom, we need only to establish the truth of the premises to "prove God exists".

That's where it gets easy.

Just about everyone already accepts the minor premise as true, so we only have to consider the truth of the major premise.

Well, maybe that is not so easy.

It seems the Presuppositionalist presupposes the major premise and has no intention to actually establish the truth of the major premise.  You are told that is just the way it is and if you press a Presuppostionalist of the Sye-kind on that he is apt to tell you that you don't need the proof anyway since everyone already knows that God exists.

Did you get that?

One of the foundations of Presuppositionalism is an interpretation of the Bible that claims everyone knows that God exists and some just "suppress that truth in unrighteousness".

The Presuppositionalist is also seen to be fond of challenging opponents by claiming they cannot falsify the major premise; which may be correct but quite beside the point.

It's not about being able to falsify the major premise.  After all, any more most atheists simply claim they don't believe any God exists.  They typically are willing to entertain the possibility and ask for evidence which the Presuppositionalist refuses to provide.

Did you get that?

The Presuppositionalist of the Sye-kind typically considers "evidential apologetics" as heresy, so they have come up with Presuppositionalism which is simply a conversational gimmick that they think allows them to successfully go out into the marketplace of ideas and complain about what they call other folks' "worldview".

And so they do, and they do have a tendency to put on a good show; at least until you've seen it a couple of times.

My own extended history with Presuppositionalists may be found archived on the following FaceBook pages:

https://www.facebook.com/BruggencatevBaty

and

https://www.facebook.com/JasonPetersenvRobertBaty

It caught my attention and there does seem to be a certain fascination, at least to me, regarding some of the popular personalities and the trouble atheists have exhibited when trying to deal with it.

I'm looking forward to seeing if the Dillahunty v. Bruggencate engagement in Memphis later this month turns out to be worth the effort or just another public relations coup for Bruggencate and his video crew (Sye's already got his script and the raw video for his "movie" will be captured in Memphis by Crown Rights, subject to funding which is under way).

Hasten the day! :o)