86. Francis Schaeffer

[Music] all right the question we are hanging for about a week is how does Shaffer represent a hybrid between traditional evidential apologetics right now it comes back to you somewhere in that 20% of the brains is in the class right now somewhere in that 20% is this conversation right got it so Joe if you were to try to give me as rapidly as possible and as printed ly as possible the basic view represented by evidential apologetics with respect to the tasks of the apologists what would it be what is the apologists trying to do if al ecologist is evidential and it's trying to show because there's design in nature there must be a designer or something like that our Jane kind of empirical evidence okay that's right all of that is correctness and I'm wanting to kind of get philosophical and so what's going on philosophically if an apologist is going to make that appeal to design what is he assuming with respect to his relationship to the person he's trying to persuade there he's assuming what about that person here we do here so here we have design you know he sells the flour that flour look beautiful it's well designed isn't it and he's expecting the pagans to say quiet with respect to that question you're the pagan I'm the Christian here's a tool right I say hey mr. pagan see that Tula yeah yeah it's beautiful isn't it yeah I would agree it really is well-designed but that's because you're objecting to the notion of it being designed over I'm assuming if I'm an evidential astiz that what with respect to this notion of design I'm not letting y'all know quite yet here I'm assuming why can I ask you that question okay so we at least go ahead and take them I think you're trying to say it right or you're about to yeah yeah I serve a common ground evidentialism assumes common ground with negated it assumes that if I show the pagan to watch we can both agree that this watch was designed and that I could correlate from a design watch to a design flower to something like that and so evidentialism believes that if I can get this person to agree to that common you know neutral territory between us then I can lead him by inexorable reason from that point where we agree to God therefore end of syllogism God is the pagan goes I see it I repent you gotta convert it so that's the that's the task that's what the evidential is trying to do presuppositional ISM well let me just solve common ground Let's Plays because what that ears he's oppositional isn't says no can't be any common ground' there's two universes the universe of darkness universe of light there's nothing in between it's a gulf fixed and so if I go shopping around for common ground with the pagan minute you know I'm going to find anything his idea of design and my idea of designer are light-years apart and so even if he uses the word design if any of even if he agrees that it's designed and I think I've got common ground with him what he's going to finally reach at the end of his reasoning process is an I hope not God not the God of the Bible he'll read something like maybe Aristotle's God or some other prefer distortion of the true God therefore it's useless and worthless to even attempt to run down this path of an evidential approach based on a hypothetical common ground with the paper the presuppositionalist says instead this guy has to get into my moccasins you know he's got to jump into my shoes he's got to walk in my path and I say to him if you will assume the God of the Bible if you will assume the infallible in the description if you will step into my shoes and see the world through my eyes then you will immediately recognize the truth for the Christian faith but you've got to jump over to my side to do it you have to presuppose that was van tills basic approach obviously and so the evidential eschews 'as the presuppositionalist of begging the question it's a logical fallacy by the way you commonly hear this phrase abused in our culture people will say well the situation that I'm looking at here really begs the question of whether or not section so here her to use that way what they mean by that would be it raises the question that you don't kind of ask the question but not begs the question begging the question as you all know because you're taken logic is a fallacy of circular reasoning begging the question means begging from the person I'm speaking to the conclusion I'm trying to get him to reach you know so it's that's why the term is used so be careful to use that the right way which has nothing to do with my immediate conversation but this is what the evidence would say you're begging this is circular reasoning this is like logical fallacies 101 sure if they presuppose your position they're gonna reach your conclusions duh what's up with that you know if I assume the Bible is the Word of God and then conclude the Bible is the Word of God okay fine but that doesn't really represent sound reasoning sound reasoning is when we begin with premise as to which we can both agree and reach conclusions that we may or may not have expected from them and the debate goes on there has tended to be in the history of this debate a little bit of a theological divide as well I think you're probably aware of this presuppositionalist have tended to be Calvinistic for example Van Til was at Westminster seminary which is a Calvinistic seminary Bahnson one of the most well-known presuppositional apologies you know more modern areas thoroughgoing Calvinist Calvinism is tended to be associated with it because they believe in a sense that the only way you can make these correct presuppositions is based on God's changing your heart and so on so they want to preach the gospel and get in a sense presuppositions in you too that are correct based on God's grace evidentialism has tended to be associated with Arminianism and an idea that I can by sweet reason persuade someone to faith so evidentialism has also been associated with Roman Catholic thought because the Thomas Aquinas was a bit of an evidential it's resonate you have Agustin over here a favorite of the Protestants Aquinas over here more of a favorite of the Catholics part of the reason francis schaeffer doesn't like thomas aquinas is because he's a Catholic and Francis shakers account honest you know so just keep your eye on that ball he I think Francis Schaeffer wrongly has absorbed some of the animosity that he picked up studying under Van Til toward that whole sort of to mystic approach and you sort of see it dripping from his writings even though I love Francis Schaeffer as you know that's still my little critique of it Schaeffer however be to his credit and I think partly because he was a practical politics he was out there trying to actually do it in the real world decided that both sides have something to offer and so he came up with this that he considers to be a kind of hybrid and the best way and I by the way I think it's a pretty effective approach but his approach is like this here is a person here are all the things this person believes there are all the beliefs so let's say I'm dealing with an atheist you don't think there's a God in it no I don't we're just here by random accident happenstance leaders that's correct so really our lives ultimately they'll then have a little bit of short-term meaning to them are ultimately going to end in nothingness that's right Manas a grown-up germ sitting on the COG of a vast cosmic machine destined for annihilation right right I've had I've talked to people that way and that's what they would say I had a loyal friend once thoroughgoing atheist communists I think a card-carrying Marxist the guy was went to law school and more than once we had conversations along these lines and then never really got very fond of it they might try that he was so good he was as good a lawyer as I was and we just sort of it you know sort of posture with each other but there was another guy at a conversation like this with who went to seminary he was a fellow that you know grew up in a Presbyterian Church and felt the call of God go to ministry went to seminary as it turns out he went to the most liberal seminary in the Presbyterian Church USA San Anselmo situated just outside of San Francisco this was quite a few years ago he went in as a Christian he done young life he done all this stuff you know he was in seminary for 1 and 1/2 years and he dropped out an atheist and even an atheist for about 25 to 30 years when I had this conversation so watch out for seminary they'll cure you of your Christianity you know so you need to be careful depending on where you go to sit so I was having I was talking with him what after him over lunch I didn't know he was an atheist he was a wonderful musician and we've done music together in various churches and stuff you know he's a wonderfully did at one time been a nightclub musician and he was just wonderful just and so we've done several different kind of gigs along the way you know and so I just kind of assumed that because most of what we had done was in a religious context that he know shared my faith at least at some general way we had this conversation was and I said hey you know I've been asked to play over at this such and so place you want to join me in this deal and he said no would know what kind of answer is that and he said no I don't think I can do this anymore he says I feel like too much of a hypocrite what are you talking about a hypocrite he's the one you probably don't know this about me but I'm an atheist atheist what you know I can't believe it he's telling me this stuff and he had been very much disturbed because the last time we had played we played it at my church of the church we both attended and the pastor had made a comment later in writing that this music we had done had for him been a very spiritual experience and I said I read and I read if I thought nice he was so troubled by that because it was so inconsistent with his own beliefs that there is no such thing as a spiritual experience that he felt like he was being a hypocrite to keep doing this music with me and so he wasn't gonna do it anymore you follow him you feel like a hypocrite yeah hell for doing music and you feel like a hypocrite because you're an atheist now let's think about this for a minute what is hypocrisy when you're an atheist and we've played around with this for a while we had you know quite a conversation in which I was attending and I think I miss exceed although he didn't repent I didn't fall on his knees right there in the restaurant or anything like that and I really don't know to this day exactly where he is but he did start going back to church so I these things uncovered in that he's over in Seattle house while I was sitting for a while but the whole press of our argument was was to say this here you have certain ideas in your head for example the idea of being a hypocrite you love your wife you had a beautiful wife and a lovely thing you love your wife you love your children those are meaningful to you those give you some sense of purpose don't they yeah and he was willing to buy off on all that and then I kept trying to impress on him that he's an 8 if he's an atheist that the meaning of those things is no more than the meaning of saying so much lover or value among grasshoppers or aunts or amoebas or slugs because if you're an atheist that's really all you amount to isn't it you see and he got very frustrated with me because I kept trying to show him that all these things that he viewed as significant were ultimately and could only be ultimately insignificant and meaningless and pure accident and just really a deluge a vapor your love for your wife it's meaningless has no meaning it's no more meaningful than one you know germ loving another sure honey all you want you're a jerk if I were to squash you right they don't great loss to the universe because what are you francis schaeffer I think would endorse that he'd say that's this hybrid approach the hybrid approach is what he calls taking the lid off or taking the rope off you have to shop around inside the life of the person that you're dealing with who claims to have something other than a Christian outlook and this is not for an atheist it could be for an Islamic person or whatever find that point where their own philosophy contradicts itself see in other words he says Schaeffer says everybody has a little bit of Christian truth in them otherwise they couldn't stand to exist they cling to that they cling to something that gives them meaning even though their overall philosophy denies that that they could be there Spencer please I put here the beliefs I'm sorry not only her beliefs yeah thank you for clarifying in other words everybody has beliefs everybody is human does the Shakers whole deal oh sorry holding them back a year and that thought he was going to win next year and our Aronson so what Schaefer says is everybody is made in the image of God everybody has a little bit of common grace and then everybody has a little of God's truth in them it is there and he furthermore says that's the only thing that keeps them getting out of bed in the morning that that's the thing that finally is the only thing that will will you know give them any sense of stability in humanity and the problem is if you put it under analysis you'll see that whatever that thing is that they claim to it cannot live compatibly with the godless philosophy and they've otherwise embraced so they are selective in their atheism their atheistic you know when they're talking to a Christian apologist but then they go back and cling to this thing that gives them meaning all the rest of the time talk to someone who's a you know environmentalist or say an animal rights person animal rights Sun sex thing is they women you you think it really matters to take care of the unit to take care of the environment oh yeah that's the most important thing that's what we got it we've got to take care of the environment and why do we need to do that well because we need to survive as a species who gives a rip whether we survive as a species what do you mean who gives a rip of whichever I mean that's important I mean you have already taught me that the only reason we're here is because a complete fluke there's a random accident who cares there's whether we survive as a species you know you got all frustrated with you know I mean you can always tell when you've hit that kind of the core of the matter Malthus was you you're an atheist and you say you know my atheism says that I'm the only thing in the universe that matters I'm going to live for me I'm gonna live for my concerns I'm not gonna have any interest in the welfare of anybody else it's all me that's what my even my survival of the fittest I'm the fittest I'm here I'm gonna I'm gonna push everybody else out of the way who gets in my way and that's what my atheism says to me you'll find that most atheists will not support you in that you know why not because something in them wants to believe that there's a better way but that better way doesn't square with their only theism it really is a little deposit of Christian truth in there and that's what they're clinging to and so Schafer says you have to find that it is a little bit of a common ground you see that's the evidentialism in it you are finding common ground in the pagan it is there it's there because it got slipped in the back door by God and every human beings got it every human being lives for something and if they were really consistent they lived for nothing and so he wants to show that even though they are denying a belief in God there's a little evidence in them of God and you can lead them based on that common ground you know back to that which must be there to give any meaning to it does that make sense that's kind of his approach he uses it with great effect Avery you were does that does that kind of doesn't well but it I mean I realize most people probably do contradict themselves but for somebody like me Chee yeah it seems like he's pretty consistent Nietzsche in fact Schaefer likes to use Nietzsche as an example because remember what was the what was probably the critical moment very dramatic moment in Michy's personal life which really was the moment that he sort of began spinning into his insanity and it was Nietzsche was always angry with himself at the degree to which he himself was victimized by his own feelings of pity it began back in the 1860s when he was a medic in the franco-prussian war which was just a little war I mean it wasn't a big deal his sister that is Nietzsche's sister his name was what Elizabeth was it Elizabeth said of the war uh it's just a merry little war you know Nietzsche however was out on the battlefield and he would go from one wounded soldier to another and he'd hear the cries in the grief am I gonna make it talk in on these poor guys out there bleeding to death dismembered whatever I mean it's awful you know and Nietzsche wouldn't and he was so angry with himself because he was an atheist he thought to himself why in the world am I so moved by grief at these people which have no more meaning than I do and it's the whole thing's meaningless and yet he was overcome to disown Crieff and you know really Schaeffer likes to point that out and the moment that was most dramatic as when he was walking down the streets would been alluded to and he saw a guy whipping his horse because his horse was Rick house and neat she goes running across the street grabs the horse around the neck and sobbing on the neck of this horse hugging him says my brother my brother you know and there was a few days later they had to institutionalize him and some people think it was just the some people think it was syphilis I don't know but some people think it was just the fact that he himself was so unable to live with the implications of his own philosophy because he himself was soul filled with that feeling of pity and pity makes no sense does pity makes no sense if you are an atheist there is no place for pity period there's no place for love so even though Nietzsche is a great example of it I think he kind of illustrates it both ways hi so anyway that's that's the idea Schafer does it to very good effect by the way he's really good at this yeah [Music] yeah yeah that's what they would say well yeah it's it's like you an atheist might say well this is just a chemical reaction within me and and even an atheist while they would make that argument to you to try to avoid the bullet of your argument to them doesn't really believe it we somewhere inside us we really don't believe that our affection our love our lifelong loyalty to and willingness to care for and cherish another person is just a chemical reaction something in us repels against that even though an atheist will maybe maintain it you know and and the part of what drives that is you know the atheist may say that to me and I may say that he ate as well you know the chemical reactions going on in me which obviously is equally valid to the one that's going on in you says that I should blow your brains out right now and I should go home and take everything you've gotten and hit Mexico and then you know and so why not and and who says which is best you've got your chemical reaction I've got mine my chemical reaction says I should opportunistically destroy yours and you know you see was saying in the end even the Atheist once the chemical reaction going on in him to be universalized a little bit he wants to make more of it than just your his private little arbitrary you know feelings about something in his life because I mean this is what my friend was trying to say to me I love my wife it's just a chemical reaction you don't really mean that do you and you know so does there at least but honest they do it's more than that it's more than just that would be the same thing as saying your love for your wife is about the same in significance as taking some soda and stirring it into water and it's there you go that's what your love for your wife is your kids is even an atheist oh you know we something in us cries out for meaning we want our lives to be meaningful and even the Atheist is going to devote his or her life to something and make it a god and that's really what you're looking for you're looking for where's the God maybe it's global warming okay fine I can work with that what's so bad about global warming you know oh well it's gonna destroy the environment well who gives a rip you know who cares you know Planet Earth there's one little speck of dust that's gonna burn out soon who cares whether ya or the swamp big deal now that's what the Atheist gotta be saying now give a red don't worry big deal let's eat drink of meat we're gonna be dead tomorrow anyway you know you see but the atheist won't do that they want to stand up for human rights whales rights this or that and fire middle whatever gonna pray if you why do you even care of Wales tears let's kill up what is this what is this religion that you create within yourself by which you try to replace you know the inevitable effects of your own atheism I think I told you the other day would Schaffer first started doing this he did it with a vengeance he's very good at it and he had one person after he'd sort of beat up on a little bit wanna commit suicide he took note to self you have to be careful with these people you know they are more precarious than you think I mean really it's the Christian who has some kind of foundation for life the Atheist is floating in a vacuum and so beneath their very you know kind of confident arrogant veneer that they try to project they've got it all figured out you've got to realize there's a very frightened person in there because they are alone in the universe and it's a scary thing and they create something to try to give a sense of meaning oh let's save the whales something to put meaning where there's a vacuum that's all you got fun maybe it's whales okay let's talk about whales see in other words your response that you're going to use change chambers approach is not to disparage that home that's dumb you know but okay let's talk about whales that becomes our common ground because I tell you it's only the Christian that has a good reason to be concerned about whales only the Christopher the painted the atheist has no good reason to be warded off whales global warming right now the thing isn't only the Christian has a good reason to be concerned about the environment tell me that's his product it-it's pretty good I have to say when I find myself in conversations which I occasionally do with people who are not believers I tend to go to the Shaffer approach every day of the week it just it gets you past a lot of stuff I have to agree this can get you into it's kind of all sorts of deep weeds you know Wow what about first cause and all this stuff you know I think it all works I think the evidential arguments work but I'm not sure they're effective but I have to say a thoroughgoing presuppositional approach leaves me a little cold - I think there's I think there's a placement both that a good apologist can use to great effect not really in the way that he does it I think I think certainly you find I mean Calvin talks about how you know godless people nevertheless pay some kind of tribute to the God they don't believe in I mean you know Calvin does that Luther doesn't to some extent but I did Schafer's the first guy that really I think works it out and in us in a way that is as thorough I guess I'd say as he does so because it seems to me like that's pretty much the most intuitive way to do it you know you would think so and I thought so once I heard kind of once I heard it but I'm not sure it is once you hear anything yeah that that makes a lot of sense I'm afraid the intuitive approach I think that many people fall into it's just whose argument is better than the other guys you know what part of the first cause don't you get you know or something like that you see and this is a little different from that because it really is trying to find in that person where they are a little microscopic Christian and I'm sure it been there and other thinkers in church history but favors the one that more or less gave it wheels how much cheaper argue as someone who hasn't really who'd have had who really doesn't care about anything so a hedonist who really just wants to live for himself because they don't care about anything so well he would find the thing that they care about that's the whole point you know somebody comes along as it I don't care about anything I need to have a conversation with and remarkably enough it's it you can you can always find the thing they care about people care they may say that and certainly they will say that if they're trying to avoid the force of your Christian apologetics oh I don't care about anything but the fact is everybody cares about something and so that's what Schaeffer would say you would say well they may say that but it just isn't the truth and if you'll spend a little time and thoughtful conversation you'll find what they care about yeah and maybe it's Wales maybe it's maybe who knows it may be something that to you doesn't seem like it's worth caring about but that's okay if you find something that really is at the heart of their life something that they were worried and I think you usually find it somebody who really truly doesn't care about anything really truly doesn't is usually plotting their own suicide because we just can't tolerate living in a completely meaningless existence and even suicide in some ways is driven by the fact that I care about something Steven and I was talking about how something to use this approach with religion like Islam which is similar to Christianity in some respects because I wasn't I couldn't exactly see that where the because it's officers somewhere and I'm sure that in his long person would agree with a lot of it but Christian would say is like a lot of agreements but I was kind of like how do you address the points of disagreements yeah with if you're dealing with people in any kind of you know religious scheme whether it's Islam or whether it's Hinduism or or Scientology and or something I think you would say the same thing holds true that God has planted in them something that really doesn't quite square with their own with their own outlook it's often you know it's been I remember when Doug Wilson spoke on Islam here a few years ago he said Islam gives us the God God who is a hermit an ultimate current this this hard monotheistic God in the Islamic conception of things was alone and where do you find any place for love with a single being you know one being another as Trinity gives Trinity is a deep mystery on the one hand but it solves so many problems on the other it creates community it creates a lot that creates relationship and great answers all it answers the problem of the one in the mininum and so many philosophical problems are solved by something that is in itself fundamentally mysterious you know that's but that's been kind of Christianity's a great robust power and i think that's the kind of thing you do it could be more difficult in some ways dealing with an atheist is a little more straightforward whereas someone that has some conception of God or multiple gods you have to do a little bit more thoughtful no interrogation about I think he would stay about the same [Music]

Channel: Bruce Gore

Views: 2,026

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Francis Schaeffer, presuppositionalism, evidentialism, apologetics, Bruce Gore

Id: s413aBOP2yQ

Length: 38min 24sec (2304 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2019