Thoughts on Presuppositional Apologetics, Part 3

As a hypothetical, consider that there is a person who holds to a unique religion and derives his worldview from this religious belief. Let’s say that in this religion, there is a triune, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent god who created the world in eight days and rested on the ninth; this god created a good world that was corrupted by his crowning creation, man, who sinned by drinking from the pool of self-authority; the god chose the man Obadiah to be the father of his special people, Murima; the nation of Murmia continually fell away from this god, even though he sent many prophets to bring them back to him; and this god sent his son, the second person in the godhead, named Klitsmar, to be born of a virgin, grow up, be tempted, teach the people, and die the terrible death of being flayed alive to redeem his people from their sins. Would such a religion, and the worldview resulting from it, provide a foundation for the preconditions of intelligibility?

Obviously, all I did was base this religion (let’s call it “Klitsmaranity”) directly on Christianity, only I changed many of the historical details. All of the ideas from Christianity that are necessary for the preconditions of intelligibility (a transcendent creator god who is just and requires a penalty for sin, a creation corrupted by the creation itself, and a substitutionary death by the son of god for his chosen people) remain intact. So while Klitsmaranity is not Christianity, like Christianity it would also be capable of providing a basis for the preconditions of intelligibility. Therefore, based on presuppositional apologetics, wouldn’t one have to conclude that Klitsmaranity is or could be true?

Obviously, Klitsmaranity is not a religion, and it isn’t even a particularly novel religion. So it would be rejected as truth because there is no evidence that a book detailing Klitsmaranity exists, that anyone follows Klitsmaranity, or that any of the events or people described every happened or existed.

I made up Klitsmaranity to illustrate why I do not think that presuppositional apologetics is the ultimate apologetic method. Klitsmaranity can not be discredited because it is self-contradictory or is arbitrary: the only thing that can is an examination of physical and historical evidence. To put it another way, I do not think that the Bible can be treated merely as a book with a collection of words, phrases, sentences, and statements in it, whose words, phrases, sentences, and statements alone are significant to prove itself true. The Bible came to mankind over time in history, and as such, we have to look at where the Bible came from. In similar fashion, Klitsmaranity is discredited because of where it comes from (a goofy theory put forward in a blog).

I think Klitsmaranity illustrates that there are other possible worldviews that are also capable of accounting for the preconditions of intelligibility and the way to discriminate between these worldviews is using something other than presuppositional apologetics. To reiterate, I am not suggesting that man can discriminate between religions autonomously, I am saying that the ability to discriminate comes from God to begin with, whether that is recognized or not. So a Christian would not have to appeal to worldly assumptions to show that something such as Klitsmaranity is false, he would only have to appeal to the preconditions of intelligibility, which the world holds to not knowing where they come from.