Brad Littlejohn on worldviewism?

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"On what authority do you say these things?" Christ implicitly puts the question back on the Pharisees by asking them to justify their rejection of John the Baptist. They are silent and embarrassed because they don't have a legitimate authority to rule against John, and they know it.

Some weeks ago I met two atheists. One took my Bible and started flipping through it. I think I just asked him, "So what dastardly deed done by God or by a saint are you looking for?" I know that they like to argue by claiming just what a moral monster God is (Cue "Oh Patrick..."). He finally reaches Elisha calling the bear to maul the 40 children. He talks about how severe and wrong it is, then I just ask, "On what authority do you say that?" I watched these two guys spin themselves in a circle for at least a half hour trying to defend an absolute judgment on the work of Elisha while not having a definite authority for their judgment. Oftentimes such peoples end up saying, "I am my own authority." The rabbit hole gets deeper from there.

Presup one time also made a good lead-in for evangelizing vegans. "On what authority do you say these things?"

How is what you are saying really any different to the moral argument for God's existence?
 
What are your thoughts on the below extract?

Another common tendency of worldview thinking is that, to the extent that it can seek to offer a pre-packaged framework of knowledge, it can be remarkably hostile to learning. Paul warns about those who are “always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7) but some worldview warriors seem to suffer rather from an “always already at knowledge of the truth and never learning” syndrome. If the key thing is to have the right worldview, then once you have that worldview, well, you already have a view of the world, you already know your way around. …

Perhaps the most serious danger of worldviewism (though this tendency is more likely to arise only within so-called “presuppositionalist” circles) is that it might tacitly—if inadvertently—endorse a kind of postmodern relativism. …

But it is easy to see how the metaphor might lead this way. Worldview-as-map, perhaps, may not—if there are different maps, but only one reality, then only one of the maps can genuinely orient you. But with the worldview-as-lens metaphor, it is easy to think in terms of different lenses that one can switch between, yielding different internally-coherent world pictures, without ever having (or being able?) to encounter the world-in-itself. This, in fact, is no coincidence, but testifies to the intellectual genealogy of “worldview,” which translates the German Weltanschauung, a term coined by Immanuel Kant in 1790.

Kant’s philosophy made a hard distinction between the world-in-itself and the-world-as-constructed-by-our-minds, a distinction that is ironically a favorite whipping boy of many Christian worldview teachers. To talk of a “Christian worldview” risks buying into this idealist and subjectivist construal of the world, in tension with the philosophical realism that characterized almost the entire previous Christian tradition.

Bradford Littlejohn, What’s Wrong with “Worldview”? (Leesburg VA: Davenant Institute, 2019), pp 5, 7-8.
I found it odd that the author would mention "philosophical realism" as an alternative to worldview thinking, which is itself a worldview.
 
I've read Frame's book on Van Til three times. I took apologetics under Frame. Two of my former pastors were close friends of Bahnsen. I've read Bahnsen's big book twice. I've had two of the contributors to Bahnsen's Festschrift autograph it for me.

With all of that said, Bahnsen's book on Van Til isn't what is debating atheists today in university forums, nor is Frame's book on Van Til writing new scholarly articles on what makes a Transcendental Argument a valid and sound proof (which is by no means a given in modern philosophy).
Consult P.F. Strawson, Bas van Fraassen, and Don Collett on contemporary work on TA.
 
I found it odd that the author would mention "philosophical realism" as an alternative to worldview thinking, which is itself a worldview.

To be truthful, I think the Davenant Institute's outright opposition to the term "worldview" is a bit strained. I do not really have a problem with the term "Christian worldview" as long as it is not used as an excuse for getting the Bible to say more than it does on specific subjects.
 
A transcendental argument specifically claims that unless you presuppose {a,b....z} you cannot account for intelligibility.

In lay speak, "ohyeahhowdoyouknow?"

Transcendental arguments, even if they work, are very shaky. They are by no means philosophically self-evident, which then comes close to having preconditions of the preconditions.
If preconditions of statements were the same logically as the original statement you'd have a point, but there not. A meta linguistic statement is different from a linguistic one by virtue of what they are reffering to. So there is no ad infinitum preconditions of preconditions so on and so forth.
 
As I am reading (skimming) over these posts, I am starting to get the uneasy feeling that Jacob and James might be the same person that is sometimes agreeing and at other times disagreeing with himself...
 
To be truthful, I think the Davenant Institute's outright opposition to the term "worldview" is a bit strained. I do not really have a problem with the term "Christian worldview" as long as it is not used as an excuse for getting the Bible to say more than it does on specific subjects.
I agree but I just found it a bit humorous they would take one worldview as a point to critique another worldview for recognizing worldviews. Also the snip about postmodern relativism applies more to cultural postmodernism.
 
As I am reading (skimming) over these posts, I am starting to get the uneasy feeling that Jacob and James might be the same person that is sometimes agreeing and at other times disagreeing with himself...
LOL!!!!! We're taking medications to fix it so we will see who comes out. Loved the post though.
 
Putting it crudely, the argument against atheism that God is necessary to account for morality.

I've used it in that fashion. I use the argument to prove that they are not good judges of right and wrong and in their worldview don't have any basis to be dogmatic on this. Though I think it provides good grounds to help them rethink their judgment of God, it should not stop there. Potential theism or bare deism is not safe. Afterwards I'll take them to Matthew 5-7 to show them a standard that is perfect, searching, and so good that a man would never come up with it. And try to get the piercing sword of the law to sink in at the same time.
 
Though I think it provides good grounds to help them rethink their judgment of God, it should not stop there. Potential theism or bare deism is not safe.

Apologetics is pre-evangelism, not evangelism. No one will be saved by apologetic arguments, though they have their place in dealing with objections to Christianity.
 
The argument is this:

If there is a law, then there is a law-giver. If this law transcends time and space, then so must the law giver.

I am not endorsing or criticizing it. Just stating it.
 
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