Tag Archives: reason

Is It Not With Your Senses?

This is a good example to go over. It shows how the other side often does not even understand what a worldview is, let alone how to argue for one.

Oshea (replying to a video): “Christians usually respond by attacking metaphysics, which isn’t wrong. However, it is better to attack their starting point for knowledge. Attack it hard. Using sensations to prove sensation is circular nonsense. Without knowing, there is no knowledge about any aspect of their worldview.”

Johnny Billy: “How do you come to belief in God? Is it not with your senses? Doesn’t everyone have the same epistemic limits? Presupposing God to prove God is also circular nonsense.”

“How do you come to belief in God? Is it not with your senses?”

No.

That sentence already assumes your starting point and then demands I live inside it. That is the very thing under dispute. If that is how debates are won, then I can just say, “Since you read the peer-reviewed article using God’s innate knowledge, I win.” I know that is what happened in the causality of the thing — knowledge comes from God — but that is not a public argument in the context of a debate. It is me describing reality on my worldview’s terms.

A blank slate cannot interpret a tree. Look at the bark all day. What leaves the eye is not “tree,” “oak,” “living,” “outside me,” or “this is not a dream.” Those are universals and judgments. Universals do not leak out of particular sensations. To understand any datum at all you already need logic, self, space, time, difference, identity, motion, meaning, language, and causation. The data does not give you those. You bring them, or you do not have “data.” You have a twitch.

It is logically impossible to start with sensation in the premise and arrive at “logic, self, space, time, difference, identity, motion, meaning, language, causation” without jumping categories and breaking identity. Sensation is not logic. A color-patch is not the law of contradiction. A sound is not “therefore.”

So no: I did not come to God by cataloging sensations and then inducting my way to the Trinity. The reason is simpler than a conversion story. If I start with sensation, I cannot know any term about anything in reality. Nothing. Not “God.” Not “no God.” Not “senses.” Not “Johnny.”

Vincent Cheung puts the wheel in the open in “Questions for Empiricists” (Sermonettes, Volume 1):

“What is a sensation? How did you learn the meaning of a sensation? How do you know when you are having a sensation? Do you sense the sensation to know that you have a sensation? If you sense a sensation, then how do you know that? Do you sense the sensation that senses the sensation? Then, do you sense the sensation that senses the sensation that senses the sensation? … If information comes from sensation, then how do you know when you are having a sensation?”

That is not a cute riddle. That is the start eating itself. If knowledge comes from sensation, then knowing that you are sensing is another sensation, and knowing that is another, and you never get the first justified term. You do not even get to name the method.

“Doesn’t everyone have the same epistemic limits?”

No. That is the whole fraud you bought.

Worldviews have different starting points. Different starting points do not have the same limits, because they are different. That is the law of identity, not a Bible tract. You assume an empiricist start, then act shocked that another start does not share your ceiling. The Christian start is God’s revelation. The causality of knowledge is defined by that same account of reality: God, not nerve endings. Very different start. Very different limits.

“Epistemic limits,”

is a polite way to say your starting point cannot justify knowledge and meaning. A start has one job: make knowledge possible. Empiricism fails that job and then calls the failure humility. What it actually yields is skepticism. Skepticism cannot even be stated without using the knowledge it denies. “I know that we cannot know” is a contradiction. So empiricism does not survive as a starting point. A start that makes knowledge impossible is not a limited start. It is a dead one.

Pretending we all begin with sensation is not humility. It is a failure to argue for a worldview. The whole point of a worldview debate is that the starts differ, and you are here to show yours can carry knowledge and the other cannot. Assuming we all begin as empiricists is like walking into a room of rival worldviews and saying, “Aliens gave us consciousness, so why do you believe the Qur’an?” That is not an argument. That is you treating your story as the weather. If aliens-gave-us-knowledge is your epistemology, it is your job to argue for it. It is not a human default.

And since Scripture contradicts empiricism, if I granted that I depend on sensation to know the Bible, I would be denying the worldview I claim to believe. I would be saying the start is sensation and the start is revelation. Those are not the same thing.

“Presupposing God to prove God is also circular.”

You are confusing empiricism with every other starting point. You are so used to empiricism’s circle that you think every axiom must be the same shape. That is sloppy on its face, because my start is not yours.

Every system has an undeduced starting point. That is what a first principle is. If you can deduce it, it is not first. Empiricism uses sensation to prove sensation. That is circular, it never terminates, and it dies as skepticism. Skepticism cannot be spoken without contradicting itself. You need knowledge to deny knowledge.

Scripture does not lean on premises outside itself. It is self-authenticating by the sufficiency of its own content — similar to the law of contradiction, rather than to a hamster wheel called empiricism. The law of contradiction is not “proved” by a second, backup law of contradiction. It is the standard: to use it, you use it; to deny it, you use it. Empiricism is not like that. To “prove” a sensation you need another sensation, and another, and another. That is infinite regress, not self-authentication. So yes: sensation, used as a start, is circular. Revelation, used as a start, is a first principle. Calling both “circular” is how you hide that only one of them can even speak.

You want to talk metaphysics? Fine. You still do not have knowledge. Using sensations to prove sensation leaves you with no start. Without a start, you have no knowledge about any aspect of your worldview — including the objection you just made. You borrowed logic, self, space, time, difference, identity, motion, meaning, language, and causation. You borrowed “circular.” You borrowed “limits.” You borrowed the demand for justification. Then you pretended those tools fell out of an empiricist start you also admit is defective and limited.

Empiricism does not yield any knowledge. That is the argument.

It was never “God exists because a sunset felt warm.” It was this: your method cannot know anything, including that sentence. You cannot even know to deny my stance on God, because on your start you have no knowledge.

Philosophy Cannot Disagree With the Bible

Someone asked: “Why does philosophy disagree with the Bible?” 

Simple answer: It doesn’t. It can’t. 

Imagine trying to argue that “2 + 2 = 5” while using math that only works if 2 + 2 really equals 4. You’d be using the very rule you’re denying. That’s silly, right? The contradiction sits there naked, impossible to hide.

That’s exactly what happens when someone says, “Philosophy disagrees with the Bible.” It’s like the moron who says, “I disagree with the law of non-contradiction.” They use the thing they claim to disagree with to make their disagreement possible in the first place. The very sentence they utter borrows the logic they pretend to reject.

People sometimes ask, “Why does philosophy disagree with the Bible?” But here’s the truth: it can’t. There is no possible world—real or imaginary—where true philosophy stands apart from Scripture. And the reason is simple: the Bible isn’t just part of philosophy; it is the foundation of all philosophy.

To argue against the Scripture, the unbeliever must employ logic, reason, and coherence. Yet, on his own secular, materialistic assumptions, universal and immaterial laws of logic cannot be justified. He is forced to borrow from the Christian worldview—where logic is grounded in the infallible mind of God—in order to construct an argument against God.

The unbeliever who says, “Philosophy shows the Bible is wrong,” has already borrowed the very tools that only the Christian worldview can justify. Where does he get the laws of logic? From the mind of the Logos, the eternal Reason who is Christ (John 1:1, Colossians 2:3). Where does he get the uniformity of nature that allows him to reason from cause to effect? From the sovereign God who “upholds all things by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). Where does he get the moral indignation to accuse the Bible of injustice? From the image of God stamped upon his soul, which he suppresses in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-21). Where does he the concepts of time and the law of identity? He cannot even open his mouth to object without standing on ground that belongs to the Triune God of Scripture.

Where does he get such laws? If his worldview is materialistic, logic is nothing but electrochemical fizz in the brain—contingent, local, and changeable. If his worldview is evolutionary, logic is a survival mechanism that might have been otherwise. If his worldview is pluralistic or postmodern, logic is a social construct. In every case the laws lose their necessity and universality. Yet he continues to use them as if they were eternal and absolute. He steals from the Christian worldview, where logic is the reflection of the mind of the eternal Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Without the Christian God, logic collapses into absurdity. The unbeliever cannot even deny God without first affirming the very rationality that only God supplies.

Next, the categories of thought that make intelligence possible. Identity and difference, cause and effect, unity and plurality, substance and attribute—these are not learned from experience. They are the preconditions for experience. How could anyone “learn” causality by observing sequences of events unless he already assumed that every event must have a cause? The empiricist is caught in hopeless circularity: he uses the category of cause to justify the category of cause. The rationalist without revelation fares no better; his innate ideas float in mid-air with no ontological anchor.

Science, the great idol of modern unbelief, fares no better. Every experiment assumes the uniformity of nature—that the future will resemble the past, that the laws observed today will hold tomorrow. Yet no amount of past observation can guarantee future uniformity on naturalistic grounds. David Hume saw the problem centuries ago and despaired. Bertrand Russell admitted that science rests on a “postulate” it cannot prove. The unbeliever nevertheless proceeds as if induction is reliable. Why? Because steals from the bible, which says he is wrong and only it is true.

When unbelievers use probability as a path to truth (such as dismissing the resurrection as “highly improbable”), Vincent Cheung points out a fatal flaw (see “Paul and the Philosophers” and his other apologetic works. These have helped me understand some of these forementioned points above.). To calculate probability, one must know the “denominator”—the complete, overarching set of all relevant possibilities. If you lack comprehensive knowledge, you cannot establish that denominator. If you somehow already knew the denominator, you would possess knowledge far greater than what the specific experiment or observation offers, rendering the experiment irrelevant.

“When the mind looks at a scene, it does more than receive raw impressions. It interprets using concepts such as identity, difference, number, relation, time, and cause. These are not derived from experience; they are logically prior to it. A child tracking a ball flying through the air already employs time and continuity to follow its motion from one moment to the next. Without these categories, there is no “motion,” no “through the air,” no coherent sequence—only a disconnected blur of sensations that cannot even be called a blur. When the same child declares that the ball broke the window, he invokes causality. To recognize any pattern at all requires identity through time and rules for connecting one case with another.” (A paraphrased summary from “Paul and the Philosophers.” Vincent Cheung.)

In Systematic Theology 2025 I explain that God’s revelation is the first principle of all knowledge—the starting point for everything we can know or think. All the things necessary for any intelligence only converge in the biblical worldview. You can’t even get to logic, truth, or intelligence unless God reveals Himself. Revelation is not one option among many; it is the necessary ground beneath every thought we think. Without this divine starting point, every claim collapses into skepticism, because there is nothing left to justify why your thoughts should match reality at all.

This is why I stress the first principle of Scripture for all public knowledge and the method of it being self-authenticating for apologetics. The Bible doesn’t need permission from human reason to have knowledge. Rather, subjects and predicates get their definition from God’s Mind, decree and revelation. And His nature is revealed in His Word. As 2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares with divine authority, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” That “every good work” includes the work of thinking, reasoning, and building a coherent worldview.

The Bible isn’t just a book about ethics. It is the very definition of systematic philosophy. It tells us where truth comes from, who God is, what logic is, and how to think straight. Jesus Himself is called the Logos— He is the law of contradiction and naturally used this thinking motion to create the universe (John 1:1). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” This is no mere metaphor. The eternal Son is the wisdom or reason or logic. Colossians 2:3 adds that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” The law of non-contradiction? It comes from God’s unchanging character; meaning, the law of contradiction is simply one of the eternal constant motions of God’s thinking. You can’t throw that law out the window and still have a conversation that makes sense, because without it language dissolves into gibberish and thought becomes impossible.

So when a person tries to use reason to attack the Bible, they are actually standing on the Bible’s own foundation to do it. They borrow God’s rules of thinking and intelligence while claiming God’s rules are false. That’s not clever—it’s impossible. There is no reality where this works. It’s like a fish trying to prove the ocean doesn’t exist while swimming in it. Talk about an intellectual own-goal: flapping around in denial while the very medium that makes flapping possible laughs at the absurdity.

Every true philosopher must begin with scripture. Anyone who doesn’t, is not really philosophizing—they’re just daydreaming with big words.

Most people think of philosophy as a neutral playground where we decide what is true. That’s a dumb mistake. There is no neutral ground. To “disagree” with the Bible using philosophy is like trying to use the rules of mathematics to prove that numbers don’t exist. It’s a personal malfunction and not actual philosophy, because you’re denying the very foundation of your own thoughts. Men can come together and pretend to have a philosophy, but that’s all it is—men in a mental delusion. There was never any philosophy; they only pretended. But it only takes one person to stop pretending and the game is up. I will be the person. I will not pretend with them.

Philosophy cannot question the Bible without ceasing to be philosophy. Philosophy only starts with the Bible, because the bible says so. You also must start with the bible so that your questions have intelligence. If you reject the Word of God, you lose the right to claim that anything is knowledge and that anything you say has any intelligence.

Stop trying to find knowledge from the outside looking in. Step into the Light, and you’ll realize the Light was what allowed you to see the path all along. Wisdom only begins with God. Intelligence ends at any disagreement with God.

So here’s the bottom line: A philosopher who rejects Scripture has already rejected the foundation of philosophy itself. They were never a philosopher. They only pretend to be one.

You can pretend to disagree with Scripture, but you can’t form a logical disagreement without first borrowing the very tools—logic, truth, coherence, intelligence, knowledge, subject and predicates—that only come from God’s revelation. That’s why Scripture never trembles before human questioning. It stands firm because it is the mind of God revealed. As 1 Corinthians 2:16 asks, “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” Yet we have the mind of Christ.

When we align our thinking with Scripture, we aren’t limiting ourselves—we’re finally standing on the only solid ground for the pursuit of wisdom and intelligence. In a world of shifting sands and human opinion, the Word of God remains the rock that cannot be shaken. Let all who seek truth come here, bow before the King of kings, and find the true beginning of philosophy—not as man’s invention, but as God’s gift to those who fear Him.

Let God’s sovereignty be a foundation for more and more healings and miracles. Let His Word be our theology, our doxology, and our apologetic. 

Endnote: “This presentation has been informed by Vincent Cheung’s ‘Paul and the Philosophers’ (2025) and his other works on biblical apologetics.” See His works for more.”