Over at Atheism is Dead, Josh linked up a podcast from The Beretta Blog. In episode 11, Van Til/Bahnsen's Presuppositionalism is the topic of choice. The intent of the show is to introduce people to this brand of Presuppositionalism and also show where the weaknesses are apparent. I do not claim to be a particularly knowledgeable Presupper...I've been involved with it for less than two years, have only read Always Ready, a couple hundred pages of Bahnsen's Analysis of Van Til's thought, a bunch of articles, and listened to several audio series from Bahnsen. I have debated a lot of unbelievers and have made a number of You Tube videos...but again, I'm nowhere near the calibur of the men over at Triablogue, nor Matt Slick...nor most anyone! But I was still able to find a number of problems with the critique Glenn offers in episode 11. What I say following is largely copied and pasted from what I wrote in the comment section at AiD...I wrote it while eating lunch...so there were a number of typos and an incomplete thought or two. I think the criticism is worthwhile enough for a blog post since everybody and their mother feels like commenting on presuppositionalism. Glenn is different from many detractors in that he clearly knows a lot about presupp, but his critique wasn't valid because he provided an incomplete picture of Van Til's apologetic. He kept things very general and avoided addressing anything with specificity. In fact, he mentioned one particular that he should have gotten into, but did not (Van Til's Ontological Trinity/One and the Many). Here are 5 glaring problems I heard on the podcast: 1) The first several minutes were really pointless. Glenn talks at length about the "cult-like" following within Van Tillian presuppositionalism...I understand that there is a cult-like following within different schools of presupp...but what does a cult-like following say about the validity of the arguments? Glenn also made it a point to say Van Til was not a philosopher, nor did he consider himself a philosopher...whether Van Til considered himself a philosopher or not doesn't negate the method. In fact, Van Til was quite a theologian...he set out to be biblically faithful in an apologetic. He saw a problem with Christians thinking biblically/theologically one way, then rejecting that when it came to apologetics. He had the audacity to question the validity of doing our apologetic in a completely opposite fashion to our theology. But what do either of these criticisms Glenn offers say about Van Til's apologetic? Absolutely nothing! 2) Glenn seems to think the transcendental argument for God (TAG) merely argues for a god, but not necessarily the Christian God. In fact, he goes so far as to say that Presuppers claim that TAG proves the Christian God without actually demonstrating how the argument proves the Christian God specifically. Part of the problem here is that Glenn leads his listeners to believe that TAG is one argument and that it is *the* argument. Fact of the matter is, TAG is employed *differently* when making different points or proving different things. I may use TAG to demonstrate objective moral norms...but that TAG isn't the same transcendental argument for the authority of Scripture...TAG is a method that plays out *differently* for whatever it is you're trying to argue for. Further, presupp uses internal critiquing to dismantle competing worldviews...which is interrelated with TAG. This will necessarily cause us to bring contradictions within competing worldviews to light and will necessarily get into us into discussing necessary preconditions for our competition's truth claims. Glenn said, for instance, he doesn't see why Islam or Judaism cannot provide intelligibility for induction and deduction, therefore, TAG doesn't prove the Christian God...it can only imply some form of Deity. He failed to acknowledge our use of internal critique which anyone I've debated will talk about...they hate my use of reductio ad absurdum. At one point, Glenn mentioned the One and the many...opting only to speak about generalities, he never interacted with an important aspect to Van Til's approach to proving the Christian God. Glenn asserts Van Til could not prove the Christian God with his apologetic because TAG is too "general"...then skips out on the One and the Many which specifically argues for the Christian God. It would have been more fair for Glenn to have delved into this since it's incredibly important to Van Tillian presuppositionalism when it argues for the *Christian* God. 3) Glenn criticizes Van Tillianism because it *seems* complex. In my experience, many perceive presupp as intellectual acrobatics, but that is primarily because Van Til saw that all of our beliefs are interrelated...and most people seem to think their beliefs arise in a vacuum without affecting their worldview...sorry folks, each belief is a part that makes up the composite of your worldview, so these are not isolated ideas. Another reason people believe presupp is complex is that many individuals take their beliefs for granted so much that they never consider what must be true in order for their beliefs about the world to even be true...in the end, Glenn's criticism that presupp is "complex" is mere opinion. 4) Not only was the first several minutes ad hom with no substance to attacking the actual Van Tillian/Bahnsenian approach, it was disingenuous. Why? That podcast was a prep course for episode 12 where Glenn plans on pointing everyone to his favorite presupper: Plantinga. Criticize those fist-biting presuppers who follow a cult of personality...only to do the same thing, just for a different brand! That strikes me as being a little deceptive, though I'm sure it was not necessarily done on purpose.I do think it's fair to point out that if this is all a precursor to touting Plantinga, Glenn flirts with the very thing he criticized Van Tillians for at the opening of his podcast! 5) Lastly, one of his biggest blunders was when he argued that Van Tillianism doesn't really start with God...it starts with our assumptions about reality...he is missing that the *logical foundation* being proven isn't that the world is the way we think it is, rather, the *foundation* is such and such way, therefore reality can be trusted to be the way we assume it to be. Whether we consciously start with God or not, logically presuppositionalism demonstrates right thinking must presuppose a worldview that only the Christian God can account for. Logically, that means right thinking must start with God. | 
