Tag Archives: Neutrality

Deny Your Worldview.

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.

Pseudo-Neutrality

The Objective Believer said: “Dr. Heiser saying the quiet part out loud: we all ‘cheat.’ We all bring our presuppositions and assumptions to the table. Do we like to admit it and talk about it? Not really. It tends to remove the gravity of whatever claims or accusations we’re making in the moment. We prefer the ‘God Stamp’ so we come across more authoritative. Here at The Objective Believer, however, we encourage people to lower the RPMs, the hysteria, take a deep breath—and let’s chat.”

Oh, how tidy that sounds. Half-right, I’ll grant you; every last human being does operate from first principles, but also that no amount of raw observation can ever bootstrap this into existence. Neutrality is a myth, plain as the nose on your face. No one reasons from a blank slate. But right there, at the very moment the admission is made, the whole thing collapses into the same tired autonomous nonsense that has shipwrecked every non-Christian system since the eggheads in Athens tried to pat Paul on the head in Acts 17. Admitting you have presuppositions does not magically create a polite stalemate or a coffee-shop standoff where we all “lower the RPMs” and chat as equals. It simply drags the battle to the only ground that ever mattered: the presuppositional level itself. The real question has never been whether we have presuppositions. The real question is which presupposition can sustain knowledge, logic, uniformity of nature, or even the bare intelligibility of the sentence “we all cheat.”

Jesus had something sharp to say about eye surgery and hypocrisy. He commands the hypocrite to first remove the plank out of his own eye. Notice the interesting presupposition baked right into the command: you can remove the wrong assumptions from your own eye and then have the ability to help others remove the speck from theirs. Of course Jesus is not saying just anyone can pull this off. He is saying that believers—those born of the Spirit—are able to do it. He does not command the hypocrite to become neutral or presupposition-free. He commands him to remove the plank first so that he “will see clearly” to take the speck out of his brother’s eye (Matthew 7:5). The plank is not “presuppositions” in general; it is hypocrisy, self-deception, and the leftover autonomous rebellion that still refuses to let Scripture be the sole axiom.

Therefore, since some Christians actually have enough respect for Jesus to obey Him, they have removed the wrong assumptions from their own eyes. That means there really are Christians who can read the Bible and read others without cheating by smuggling in alien presuppositions. To slap a blanket “we all cheat” across the board is to call Jesus a liar. The bible does not say we are all cheaters when we read the bible and do philosophy. It lumps the renewed believer in with the unregenerate who still suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). It denies the power of regeneration. It denies the sufficiency of Scripture. Some Christians have obeyed. They have removed the plank. They do not cheat with wrong presuppositions. They see reality as the Bible shows it because they cannot do otherwise. That is not a flaw; that is victory.

The “we all cheat” slogan is exposed as the self-refuting nonsense it always was. As Vincent Cheung writes in “The Christian’s Self-Definition”:

“You may complain that it is impossible to approach anything, including the Christian faith, without bringing to it our own backgrounds and presuppositions. This is true. But if you are a Christian, then you are a new creation in Christ—you have a new background. And if you are a Christian, then the Bible commands you to renew your mind—get a new set of presuppositions. Reorient your thinking, and enthrone Christ in your mind as the reference point by which you define yourself and everything else. Then, you will find it impossible to approach anything apart from your Christian background and presuppositions. Only then can you be assured that you have a firm grasp on your identity as a Christian.”

Spot on, and it lands like a hammer. The Objective Believer’s own statement trips over its own feet the moment it opens its mouth. It declares that all claims lose their gravity once presuppositions are exposed. That is their hidden axiom of pseudo-neutrality dressed up in humble-brag clothing. And so the claim that “all claims lose their gravity once presuppositions are exposed” loses its own gravity toward all people; it has no logical relevance to anyone. The standard applied to itself means we should treat the O.B.’s statement as without any weight and worthless. And so I encourage to do just that. If it is true, then it is false at the same time. It denies the law of contradiction that Jesus Himself appeals to in Mark 12:35-37. Cute.

Because God puts substantial innate knowledge in all of us (Romans 2:15), and this knowledge only is by God and no one or nowhere else, then by logical necessity, there is no neutral presuppositions. There is only divine revelation.

Lower the RPMs? Take a deep breath and “let’s chat”? That is precisely the fatal maneuver of pseudo-neutrality. Paul did not sit down with the Athenians for a calm exchange of assumptions. He confronted their presuppositions of idolatry, declared their ignorance, and proclaimed the true God who commands all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). No deep breathing exercises. No neutral ground. Just the blazing sword of divine revelation cutting through the fog and commanding men.

The moment you pretend neutrality is even possible, you have already smuggled in the very autonomous starting point you claim to expose. It is like a thief lecturing the bank manager on security while his pockets are still bulging with stolen cash. The Objective Believer wants us all to pretend we are starting from scratch so he can keep his own starting point hidden behind a smile and a latte. But Scripture will not play that game. Regeneration does not leave you with the same old toolkit of fallen assumptions; it gives you an entirely new mind (Romans 12:2). The old man is dead. The new man sees. That is not arrogance—it is obedience. And obedience always looks like cheating to the one still suppressing truth.

So yes—admit your presuppositions. Good start. Now test them against the only foundation that cannot be shaken. Watch how quickly they fold like a cheap lawn chair in a hurricane. The Bible stands because it is divine revelation from the God. Submit to Scripture or remain in absurdity. There is no third option. And if you still want to play the “we all cheat” card after that, at least have the honesty to admit you are calling Jesus a liar while pretending to be the most reasonable guy in the room. The plank is still there, so watch out or it might smack someone in the face. Or better yet, let the Spirit and the Word yank it out.