By asking a Christian to set aside the Bible and use some other starting point before he is even allowed to discuss creation, a group is already demanding that he deny Christianity up front. That is not an honest discussion. That is a rule that requires the Christian to abandon the only starting point that determines his entire worldview before the conversation begins. I saw this happen in a Facebook group called @Creationism . Someone asked what it would take for a Christian to prove creationism and what it would take to disprove it. The straightforward answer is the Bible, and disproving the Bible. Pointing out that the Bible is a different starting point from their so-called neutral evidences got me banned and blocked. The group’s rules effectively say you must use their epistemology, not yours, to participate. That is either a cruel and deceptive way to force Christians to deny their faith before they open their mouths, or it is people so confused about epistemology that they do not realize what they are demanding. Either way, Christians should see the trick for what it is.
They act like they want honest debate. They do not. Honest debate lets each side use its own starting point and then tests which one can actually produce knowledge. These rules do the opposite. They deny the Christian the ability to use his epistemology and demand that he use theirs just to be allowed in the room. That means the Christian must deny his worldview at the door. He must pretend the Bible is not his first principle before he is permitted to say anything about creation. That is not neutrality. That is a pre-loaded demand that the Christian switch systems. Jesus Christ means everything to me. I am not going to deny Him to satisfy a group’s rules. You cannot make me do it unless you first prove that your alternative starting point actually produces knowledge. That is the entire point.
Imagine the opposite. Suppose I started a Facebook group also called Creationism. I displayed it as an open public place for all different philosophies to argue for their position in honest debate. Then the rules stated that you can only defend creation or non-creation by using the Bible as your only starting point for knowledge. No opposing worldview would accept that. They would correctly refuse, because it forces them to abandon their own starting point before they are even allowed to speak. That is exactly what this group does in reverse. Their rules say the same thing against Christianity: abandon your starting point and use ours, or you cannot participate. They pretend the arrangement is fair and open. It is not. It is a one-way demand that only one side keep its epistemology while the other side is required to surrender his at the door.
The fact that this is not obvious shows that the people running such groups have no concept of what epistemology is, no matter how educated they appear. Non-Christians, the more educated they are and the more books they read, become better at deceiving themselves. They do not become more intelligent. They do not become more informed. They become better at knowing that they have a confident feeling about something. They are better at deceiving themselves. They are better at feeling confident, but they have no justification. They have no argument that their epistemology yields knowledge and intelligibility. They just go confident about it. Vincent Cheung makes the same observation in Paul and the Philosophers when he discusses probability. The scientist has never actually done a probability, because he does not have a denominator. What he has is a feeling of confidence about something. He then addresses that feeling of confidence inside a probability for which he has no justification. He is using probability the way a kid uses play-doh: something to put his feelings into a formal-looking context. He has no justified argument that the calculation produces knowledge. The education simply makes him smoother at packaging the feeling.
A starting point is not a minor preference you can set aside for a debate. It is the root that determines the entire worldview. Every true belief is either stated in that starting point or validly deduced from it. The Bible is the Christian’s only starting point. It is a closed, deductive system. Scripture uses deductive logic and declares itself the only true epistemology while declaring every rival false. If a Christian adopts a non-Christian starting point, he has already abandoned the one that determines his view of everything. He is no longer operating as a Christian. He has switched systems. That is not a temporary move “for the sake of argument.” It is a denial of the faith before the conversation even begins. No Christian who understands his own starting point will accept that demand.
That is exactly how stupid this request is. It is the very thing we disagree about. The Christian’s starting point says the other one is false. Demanding that he use the other one is not neutral inquiry. It is a request that he contradict himself from the first sentence. Flip the demand and the absurdity becomes obvious. If I asked a person who relies on observation to defend his points, and I demanded that he use a non-observational method to prove the Bible wrong, he would not accept that. Observation is his starting point. Demanding he set it aside is demanding he abandon the root of his worldview. He would correctly refuse. The same logic applies here. You do not get to demand that the Christian abandon his while you keep yours. That is not how starting points work. It is how people who do not understand epistemology talk.
You have to prove that your starting point gives knowledge, meaning, and intelligibility. Otherwise you cannot even use intelligence to tell a Christian you disagree with him. When you demand a non-biblical starting point, you are assuming your starting point can justify subjects and predicates, the law of non-contradiction, identity and difference, causality, motion, time, space, meaning, and probability. You have not shown that it can. Empiricism cannot justify a single sensation with sensation. Induction cannot produce universals from particulars. Probability collapses without a justified denominator. Science borrows categories it cannot defend. Until your starting point produces these things without circularity or self-contradiction, you have nothing. You do not even have the knowledge to tell the Christian that his starting point is not a starting point. You have no right to demand that he use yours, and you have no ability to intelligibly disagree until you do.
Vincent Cheung, Systematic Theology: the Bible is the ultimate authority of the Christian system; therefore our first principle, our starting point, is the Bible itself. From that principle the system is deduced. Non-Christian principles (empiricism, induction, human speculation) make knowledge impossible and collapse into skepticism, which is self-contradictory. Oshea Davis, sections on the First Principle and Self-Authenticating Starting Point: Scripture is the exclusive public first principle. Any claim not stated in it or validly deduced from it is not knowledge. Human starting points fail the tests Scripture itself gives. Demanding a dual or non-biblical epistemology is already a rejection of the biblical one.
Christians should refuse the setup. The burden is on the group that makes the demand. Prove that your starting point gives knowledge of the preconditions of intelligibility. Prove it without borrowing from the Christian system. Until you do, you have nothing, and the rule that forces a Christian to abandon his starting point is simply a rule that he deny Christ before he is allowed to speak. That is not going to happen. Groups that pretend to host honest discussion while requiring opponents to deny their worldview at the door are not hosting honest discussion. They are running a closed shop that already decided the outcome by banning the only starting point that makes knowledge possible.
