Atheists often argue that presuppositional apologetics provides no evidence for their claims. However, this is not a valid argument against presuppositional apologetics.
Quotes About Presuppositional Apologetics Ignoring Evidence
The question of the existence of God is a factual question, and should be answered in the same way as any other factual questions.
Atheist Gordon Stein
Presuppositional Apologetics Does Not Ignore Evidence
It should be obvious that different types of evidence are used to prove different things. Presuppositional apologetics does indeed use evidence to prove its claims. However, critics of presuppositional apologetics simply do not accept the evidence provided.
Greg Bahnsen says this concerning the nature of evidence:
We might ask , “Is there a box of crackers in the pantry?” And we know how we would go about answering that question. But that is a far, far cry from the way we go about answering questions determining the reality of say, barometric pressure, quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radio activity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, the university itself that you’re now at, past events, categories, future contingencies, laws of thought, political obligations, individual identity over time, causation, memories, dreams, or even love or beauty. In such cases, one does not do anything like walk to the pantry and look inside for the crackers. There are thousands of existence or factual questions, and they are not at all answered in the same way in each case.
Just think of the differences in argumentation and the types of evidences used by biologists, grammarians, physicists, mathematicians, lawyers, magicians, mechanics, merchants, and artists. It should be obvious from this that the types of evidence one looks for in existence or factual claims will be determined by the field of discussion and especially by the metaphysical nature of the entity mentioned in the claim under question.
Greg Bahnsen
Since God is metaphysically non-material, the evidences used in presuppositional apologetics to prove Christianity are philosophical in nature, not empirical or experiential.
More Resources
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