A "Manata"-nous refrain

After all these "Moore" puns, I couldn't resist any more... Don't the presups present us with a "Manata"-nous refrain of denials ?

Here is my suggestion : perhaps we should repeat "WE DON'T LIVE IN YOUR CHRISTIAN CARTOON UNIVERSE" over and over until they get it. Unfortunately, I don't expect that they would realize anything except that they are wasting their time.

I want to address the debate from another perspective - to examine whether the presuppositionalists are really committed to the concepts that they pretend to defend. This has been addressed partially in other entries - recently, CADman pointed out that the Bible, ostensibly the presuppositionalist's standard, has major logical problems, making their commitment to logic problematic.

What about morality ? Well, presuppositionalism (despite Manata's objections), and its God-created morality, implies Divine Command Theory. The good is the good because God orders it. This necessarily entails that moral autonomy and the individual's values are subservient to a transcendent standard, thus making the presup commitment to moral judgment and values a lie. As Dawson Bethrick points out on his blog, presuppositionalism by its very nature rejects the notion of man as moral agent.

Furthermore, as Christians, presuppositionalists cannot be committed to values. Salvation has infinite moral weight, and thus overrides any other consideration. No Christian has been able to demonstrate anything but subjective reasons to believe otherwise.

Are presups committed to causality ? Hardly ! How is one to make sense of a basic statement such as "God caused the universe from nothing" without tripping all over oneself ? Causality is based on contiguity in spacetime, which is impossible in this case. Causality implies a context of identity, and thus has no meaning when applied to a being whose very nature is a rebellion against the axiom of identity and its perceived constraints.

Is the presuppositionalist committed to induction and science ? Only insofar as they support his faith. Once you break out of the "science has proven God" dream and enter reality, induction and science are inconvenient burdens to be rationalized post-haste.

Presuppositionalism in itself is not committed to morality, causality, induction or science. The only possible justification for such commitment is the introduction of secular values - love of reason, thirst for knowledge, rejection of fallacious authority, acceptance of moral responsibility and moral autonomy - in the presuppositionalist mindset. By his every argument against materialism, the presuppositionalist demonstrates the lasting truth of the material values that we hold dear. For this, perhaps, we should recognize in them some kinship... but not too much. ;)