Beware! Presuppositionalists!
I see that Aron Ra is wrestling with a presuppositionalist. Presuppositionalists are incredibly obnoxious debaters, and right now, it’s the most common tactic creationists use to defend their nonsense, thanks to Answers in Genesis, which has been pushing it hard.
We agree that presuppositional apologetics is the ultimate biblical approach to apologetics. The common accusation that the presuppositionalist uses circular reasoning is actually true. In fact, everyone uses some degree of circular reasoning when defending his ultimate standard (though not everyone realizes this fact). Yet if used properly, this use of circular reasoning is not arbitrary and, therefore, not fallacious.
Presuppositionalism is basically a false equivalency. They argue that there is merely a difference in the foundation of the creationist and scientific views: the creationist builds on their presupposition that the Bible is true, while the scientist builds on the presupposition that the Bible is false and that atheism is true. It’s the first thing Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” throws at attendees, with a display of a fossil with a paleontologist and a creationist each interpreting it in their own way. Here’s a set of bones, the paleontologist says; I think they were deposited 70 million years ago, and buried under river sediment. Here’s a set of bones, the creationist says; I think they were deposited in a great flood 4,000 years ago, and buried under the flood sediments. See? Same facts, just different interpretations.
That is, of course, nonsense. There are logical/philosophical arguments against presuppositionalism (there are good examples in the comments at Aron’s blog), but I guess I’m not a philosophical thinker in that same vein — they all seem to twisty and abstract for me, and I don’t really trust those kinds of rebuttals. Too often it feels like you can use philosophy to argue both sides of a position, and when you’re dealing with creationists, they’re mainly using philosophy badly with intent to obfuscate. I’d rather not use a tool I’m not strong in to battle with someone whose skill lies in abusing that same tool — it sounds like a formula for a very bad debate.
I have two arguments I use against them, arguments that are more comfortable for someone with an empirical sort of brain.
One is that they’re being dishonest. They have not presented the totality of the facts at hand, but are being extremely selective. Good science must encompass all that we know, not just the cherry-picked bits selected to avoid compromising your favorite hypothesis. That fossil is not just a set of bones; it’s part of an assemblage, which is part of a complex series of layers, which have compositions and arrangements with known mechanisms to produce them. We also have physical and chemical data about the composition of the mineralized bones, and about the ratios of isotopes in surrounding rocks. We know about the world-wide distribution of related fossils, we know the ecological context of that specimen, we understand the taphonomy of fossils. The presuppositionalist requirement demands that all data that contradicts the Biblical explanation be ignored, set aside with the excuse that legitimate data would not contradict the fable told in the book of Genesis.
The Biblical explanation is not an adequate alternative hypothesis. It fails any scientific test. If it were simply a completely parallel, independent explanation of the same set of observations, it would explain all of the shared observations, and would also open the door to predictions that would allow us to test differences.
My second argument is that their Biblical explanations are not actually foundational. Even the true believers do not operate as if the Bible were a truly sufficient source of answers for navigating the real world.
Foundational presuppositions ought to be much more fundamental than that the Bible is literally true. To me, the really basic assumptions are that I exist; that the world exists; that I can sense this world imperfectly; that there are other beings with whom I can communicate (imperfectly again) who are also trying to sense the nature of this world. From there we try to build a coherent model of that perceived world, using as much evidence as we can glean.
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