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The Four Silver Bullets (II) - Page 2

© Francois Tremblay

2. "the Bible has extraordinary attributes X and Y, therefore it is true".

Most evidential arguments use circular reasoning. The first type of argument does not justify why we should accept the Bible as a standard of truth. Unless external evidence is presented to support the propositions of the Bible, they have to be rejected like any other arbitrary proposition. For instance, the story of "Jesus" cannot be accepted on the basis of the Bible alone, given that all the external evidence we have shows that it never happened.

The second type of argument tries to provide such justification, but all the attributes they list are known to be man-made.The Bible was assembled from books of all sorts of different eras, by partisan theology, based on arbitrary criteria. Why should we be surprised if the Bible presents consistency ? In fact, it is the lack of consistency in the Bible that is most striking

Finally, presuppositional arguments are of the type : "Atheists/materialists cannot explain why they use X, therefore God exists". Some examples they give are logic, science (uniformity of nature) and morality. Against these examples, you can easily use TANG or Materialist Apologetics.

In general, presuppositional arguments lack specificity, as we've seen before. But what I find in discussions is that asking a Christian to justify his presuppositionalism usually exposes him. As stupid as it sounds, most Christians who use presuppositional arguments simply assume that they are right. They have a Saturday Cartoon understanding of science or materialism, and routinely commit the Composition Fallacy ("chemicals can't think, therefore your brain can't think !"). Sound understanding of the four silver bullets should give you the upper hand over such shenanigans.

What is your opinion on the subject ? If you have issues you'd like to see featured here, email me. Don't hesitate to post on the message board - go back to the main page and scroll below the articles list, or if no thread on the subject is available yet, click on "Start a discussion on this article". Happy thinking !

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