This is the first part in an "ancient" series on apologetic by the late Greg Bahnsen. He comes from the presuppositional school of apologetics. Hopefully this admittedly dated series will provide some insight into the world of apologetics.
I am so ignorant of differing apologetic views that I am indulging my curiosity and listening to different teachers. Greg Bahnsen is an individual that I am reading concerning postmillennialism and am allowing myself to evaluate some of his other teaching. Since previous evaluations indicated to me that I was not by nature in the presuppositional camp, it will be interesting to see how I have grown in my view of secular world views.
In this lecture I really do take seriously the myth of neutrality. I believe a lot of this lecture though is built on "scaring" (maybe Bahnsen would say "enlightening") believers with the worst of secular experiences. Today the world might be as hostile was previously described. The recent attacks on First Baptist Dallas and Tim Tebow seems to be the vocal peek of a growing undercurrent within America. People really are getting fed up with our "intolerance". So it hardly can be said that the secular world is neutral with respect to religious things and even less neutral to Biblical things.
So this common pretense is really an "enlightenment" idea. It fundamentally is the presupposition that one must reject all truth claims unless they have been evaluated from a position of no presuppositions. Now since I am hardly an expert, I can't attest to the greater philosophical issues behind this but to me it quickly becomes patently false to believe that any truth claim can be accepted without the eventual rejection of all truth claims only to return to evaluate every truth claim.
I am certainly not an expert on historical philosophy and written though, but I wonder how this would apply to Descrates,
I noticed that while I was trying to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth, "I am thinking, therefore I exist "[cogito ergo sum] was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of philosophy I was seeking
I hope to have the followup videos/posts in this series over the next month. I am excited to see how much more I can completely confuse myself as I listen to more of Bahnsen! :-)
