Presuppositionalism

Presuppositionalism ("presup" from here on) holds that belief rests on presuppositions. Presups attempt to bring coverts by arguing that the only rational, coherent worldview is that which begins by presupposing the divinity of the Bible, the existence of God, and the reality of Christ’s sacrifice. They argue indirectly for God, rather than directly as classicists and evidentialists do, by trying to prove "the impossibility of the contrary," i.e., attempting a reductio ad absurdum on the opponent's worldview. In other words, Presups say that one must assume Christianity to argue against it. All the seemingly non-religious, secular knowledge and skills we possess (science, reason, morality, love, logic, naturalism, atheism) - all of them presuppose a belief in the god of the bible. As crazy as that sounds it allows them to respond to every criticism with something like, "you just proved my point - by using logic (an invention of god), to argue against god, you are proving god exists!"

Presups argue that the evidence we experience in the world is simply facts and pieces of data that must be interpreted through a worldview, and that the only way to consistently interpret these facts is through the Christian worldview. In other words, a person looking at facts and evidence will not necessarily be led to Christ; rather, one must start by assuming the truth of the Bible in order to find Christ.

Actual evidence in the here and now does not matter to a Presup. All that matters is the assumption that the Bible is true. However, if you simply assume your beliefs are true and throw out any use of evidence at all, if there is no possible evidence or experience that could disprove your beliefs, you will never really be able to test if they are true - there is no real-world testing of the deductions of Presup. All evidence is either denied, ignored, or reinterpreted to fit with the Presup worldview.

Problems with Presup include:

• The logic is circular: you prove something is true by assuming it is true.
• Presup could be used to “prove” any religion, or even atheism.
• Just because a worldview is coherent doesn’t mean it’s true.
• There are many things about the Christian worldview that are arguably not coherent.
• There are other worldviews that also explain the existence of reason and logic.
• You can’t actually know something is true if you simply discount evidence entirely.
• Finding truth involves not making presuppositions, but trying to rid yourself of them.